


Shield of Heaven

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (No Graphic Depictions of any of the Non-Con Elements), A Very Different Endverse, A surprising number of feels, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Demon!Dean, Dubious Consent, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Redemption Arcs, These characters aren't who they were...but they might be by the end ;), demon!Sam
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-08-01 13:01:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16285061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: 300 years after the Apocalypse, North America is a horrific parody of a bygone era; regressed technologically and near-constantly at war.  The survivors are terrorized by their oppressors: Sam and Dean Winchester. Trapped as Lucifer's Generals on Earth since the final seal broke, they remember nothing of who they were or what brought them here.Before the Light Bringer returns to lead his final charge, the long-forgotten prophet Chuck Shurley starts a ripple effect that he hopes will change everything—by throwing one particular angel behind enemy lines.





	1. All Along the Watchtower

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, readers!
> 
> This is the new WIP I will be posting over the next few months. As with previous posted-by-chapter fic, this work is already finished and I will be posting chapters as I have time to edit them and tweak them.
> 
> I'm also excited to say that I get to treat you to some art by the amazing [migglangelus](http://migglangelus.tumblr.com/). Miggles is a pure delight to work with, the talent that gushes from their hands never fails to astound me and I am very delighted and proud to call them my friend. Seriously, they're fabulous and you should go check out everything miggles has ever done! Miggles art is going to feature frequently as the fic progresses, so please do go give them some love for it if you have a moment.
> 
> PLEASE READ THE TAGS FOR THIS FIC. I'm not joking about it. Most of the graphic stuff *does* happen off-screen, but I wouldn't want anyone to be shocked by references to it.
> 
> The only other thing I'd like you to remember is...Sam, Dean, and even Castiel in this story are NOT how you remember them. They have been twisted far beyond their usual selves. This is the story of their redemption into the characters we know and love :)
> 
> Posting something entirely new is always terrifying, so please do leave me some comments to let me know what you think! 
> 
> Mal <3

 

 

 

 

 

**_God lay dead in heaven;_ **

**_Angels sang the hymn of the end;_ **

**_Purple winds went moaning,_ **

**_Their wings drip-dripping_ **

**_With blood_ **

**_That fell upon the earth._ **

 

**_-1905, Stephen Crane_ **

 

 

 

Crowley was a rat.

A turncoat, a canary, a squealer, a snitch—he’d been called them all. None of them were wrong, he contemplated as he descended the iron staircase into the depths of 1979 2nd Street, ostensibly known as _The Exodus Club,_ but more commonly referred to as The Pit.

The Pit was a place Crowley avoided, except when his presence was necessitated by survival. He guessed It had been at least forty years since he’d last been here, yet nothing much had changed. It had a charmingly dated style of decor from a time period way back _before_ , where showgirls danced and black-eyed lovers sipped cocktails into the night. When they cleared out, the real horrors came to out to play; the humans so desperate to be spared that they had signed over to do the General’s work, and the vampires (whose contentious alliance with the General was always in doubt, just too much humanity in them to be trusted). Rumor had it on certain nights, even the General himself graced the card tables and rolled a few heads.

Tonight, Crowley was hoping, would be one of those rumored nights. He searched the crowd for his face but didn’t see it, settling instead on the one face he did recall.

“Dagon,” he tipped his bowler hat respectfully. “Not sure if you’d remember little old me—”

“Crowley.”

Her voice was flat, falling from a perfectly made-up face that couldn’t distract from a plunging, glittering gown in a deep wine red. “You’re hard to forget. I hoped the apocalypse would take you, yet you reared your head. I hoped the General would crush you to dust, but again you returned over and over. What’s the excuse this time, rat?”

“Yes, uh, well.” Crowley ducked his head and bowed awkwardly. “The General has certain uses for me, so occasionally my presence is welcomed. As you know.”

Dagon’s lip curled, her disgust evident even as she turned to walk away, a single finger indicating that he should follow deeper into the club.

“Will your presence be welcomed tonight, old King?” She didn’t bother to add much syrup to her voice, but there was just enough that Crowley knew she was fishing for information she could use herself.

“I believe so,” he grinned slightly at the back of her head as he followed, down a darkly paneled corridor to an elevator that led even deeper underground. “But my words are only for the General.”

The ride down through the hidden levels beneath the bar was silent, until they reached the bottom.

“You think you’re special.” It was a statement, not a question, so Crowley didn’t directly answer, moving to stand beside Dagon as the elevator doors opened.

“We were almost friends, once,” he commented after a moment, a brief smile passing across his lips. “Before.”

Dagon snorted inelegantly, a jarring sound against her curled hair and flamboyant outfit. “No, we weren’t.”

“Oh,” Crowley taunted her gently as he stepped out of the elevator, pressing the button to send her back up along with it. “I wasn’t talking about you, Dagon.”

  


In three hundred years, he had spent so few nights being still. Tonight would be one of them, Castiel realized with a heavy heart. It had been some time since they’d lost one of their own—nearly seventy years, if he stopped to think about it. They’d gotten better at hiding as their numbers dwindled. It had been Anael, then—he’d been sad, but he hadn’t mourned like he would tonight. This time it was Samandriel. He had been young and so full of hope when all this began. _Before._

Castiel knew his memories of that era, _before,_ were... wrong. He knew that Naomi had reached into his mind and removed much of that time. He knew he’d had doubts then—a grave sin to Naomi. So his mind had been purged.

It was only after Naomi was gone, swallowed up into the ranks of the Light Bringer, that he began to fall out of line again. It was then that he began to realize that whatever she had taken from him, she had probably taken because it was right, and good, and true. Too late now - those memories were gone. But he did remember Samandriel... he remembered his brother’s faith that Heaven could fix the mistakes they’d made, that they could reclaim the barbaric horror that was now Earth.

 _Oh Samandriel,_ Castiel thought. _Three hundred years and you still believed that maybe one day, everything would return to God’s plan. Look where it got you._

Castiel did not believe. His vessel’s beige trench coat bunched on the floor as he crouched, tangling slightly around his feet. He reached forward, his fingers dusting lightly over the burnt wing-marks on the floor of the abandoned factory. There were many factories like this, here in Detroit, ones that had been abandoned even before the first seal had broken. Much of the rest of the nation followed not long after that began.

It was only when one of the Generals had taken up residence here that life came back to Detroit. It was a sickening parody of life, but as bodies moved along the streets and into churches and bordellos, it had to be called life.

Castiel and his garrison came not long after. In the two hundred years since, he had dodged and fought the Generals armies, gathering together as many of his kind as he’d been able. It had been pointless, only to see his kin crushed one by one.

Only seven remained now that he knew of—seven angels, in the whole of existence. One of them being the Light Bringer himself, though Castiel bristled to even think of him as kin.

The General’s men that had trapped Samandriel here couldn’t be far away, Castiel knew. He should leave, he should spread his wings and return to the ragged garrison back at Camp Chitaqua. He felt heavy though, at that moment. Heavy with grief, not just for Samandriel, but for this world that he had once loved so much. Grief for things he couldn’t remember, that he knew _mattered,_ things that had led to this vile reality that teetered daily on existing at all.

So Castiel remained, crouched over his younger brother’s burnt wings. He cried tears of blood, and the red of them became the only color his eyes could see.

 

 

“Crowley.”

Alistair's voice was cloying, happy to see him in a way that denoted no love between the two at all.

Six men sat around a card table in the large office at the end of the corridor. They were so deep underground that there were no windows or even vents, the air thick and stale. A single light-bulb dangled bare above the table. Stacked poker chips fell and cascaded into puddles as several of the men abandoned their cards to stand, pushing back their chairs to step up towards Crowley.

“Ahh, I see the full complement of ass-kissers are here tonight.” Crowley rolled his eyes. “I’m here for the boss, not you. Don’t waste my time, you might make him mad.”

“What would you have that the General would ever be interested in hearing?” A thick, older-looking demon with yellow eyes named Azazel leaned back in his chair, curiously regarding Crowley with a revolting lick of his lower lip.

His stomach recoiling at the sight of the demon he’d known for hundreds of years, Crowley shook his head as he began to move resolutely past them all.

“Give it up, Azazel. Anything worth facing the General for is something I’d never want to waste on _you_ ,” he spat.

A demon that Crowley didn’t recognize, but who clearly recognized him, cracked his knuckles threateningly. He had a plain, flat face and crossed eyes, his suit ill-fitting and cheap looking compared to his companions.  

“Don’t think you should disturb the boss without good reason, y’know. You ain’t King no more. You forgettin’ your place, Crowley?” The demon sounded as dumb as he looked.

“Are you forgetting _yours_ , Buckner?” The voice that came from the back of the room was oddly human-sounding and calm.

“N-n-no, sir. Not at all,” Cheap-Suit—who Crowley now filed away in his mind as Buckner—stuttered and stumbled over his words in his master’s presence.

With a filthy look thrown at Crowley, Buckner returned to his seat in silence.

The other demons followed suit, an assortment of side-eyes and open loathing thrown the way of the smartly-suited ex-King of Hell.

“Crowley.” The voice at the back of the room stepped into view. “Come to lick my boots, old friend?”

Crowley’s grin held familiarity, but his eyes held only terror.

“Dean.”

  


 

Sometimes, Crowley admitted to himself, it was almost like he _missed_ Dean Winchester. He knew a little of him now, but in the times when they had met _before_ , they had briefly helped each other. He’d had an odd sense that there could have been more if things hadn’t gone the way they did. Not _that_ kind of ‘more’ (Dean was attractive enough, but Crowley didn’t have a death wish) just some sort of odd friendship or respect that the demon could never quite put his finger on.

Realistically, Dean should have killed him decades ago – so he allowed himself to consider that perhaps Dean felt that too, that whatever-it-was that wasn’t between them.

Dean’s feet were clad in shiny fresh-polished dress shoes that Crowley didn’t for a minute dream that he’d shined up himself. He kicked them up, ankles crossed, onto the bare oak desk behind which he sat. The wooden journalist's chair he leaned back in creaked ominously as the man reclined.

He was just a man. Crowley had to remind himself of that sometimes. Many thought that Dean Winchester was a demon, or a dark archangel, or some kind of horror they couldn’t explain. Crowley was one of perhaps a handful that knew better, that remembered the man’s humanity before the seals broke.

He also recalled that it was Dean who broke the first one.

“ _There must be some kind of way outta here, said the joker to the thief_ ,” Dean sang idly, bringing his eyes down from the ceiling to regard Crowley. He sucked in a drag of a thick cigar - the very best, of course - before snubbing it out on the table.

Crowley raised an eyebrow, smoothing out his smart back coat as he lowered himself into one of the two seats on the visitor’s side of the desk.

“All Along the Watchtower,” Dean explained as if that answered the unspoken question. “Jimi Hendrix.”

“Right,” Crowley responded flatly. “You called?”

“I did,” Dean answered. The chair protested loudly as he flicked his feet down quickly, so that he could bring his bare forearms to rest upon the desk. Beyond his rolled up white shirt sleeves, the skin of his arms was tan but bare, showing none of the scars and marks one would expect for a man who had fought so much. “Did you lie like I asked, tell everyone that you were the one looking for me? That you had information?”

Crowley nodded, thoughtful but not bothering to question why Dean had wanted him to lie. “Yes. I hoped you’d be here tonight so that my visit would coincide with the Angel news. It works for us.”

Dean tilted his head, green eyes resting thoughtfully on the demon’s slightly round face. “Angel news?”

“Samandriel. Your sweet baby brother got his hands on Samandriel,” Crowley explained quietly. “Seems I am actually bringing you some information.”

“Hmm,” came Deans only response. With a slight nod, his eyes drifted again, over to a well-stocked brass cart of alcohol and accompaniments that sat along the back of the office wall.

Rising, he drifted towards it and lifted up a thickly cut crystal glass, pulling a black silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiping it needlessly.

Dean didn’t speak, so Crowley didn’t answer, returning instead to the topic at hand. “You summoned me here for something particular, then.”

Dean reached for a bottle of whiskey, square with a black label, but his fingers halted in midair. After a second, they moved left, picking out a different one.

“It’s strange,” he murmured. “Whenever I see you, I feel drawn to the Glencraig. Do you even like it?”

“I like it best,” Crowley confirmed, the small confession hanging in the air between them like it somehow meant something.

Nodding, Dean filled two glasses—not bothering to wipe Crowley’s—and returned to the desk. Before he pushed the demons glass over towards him, his fixed his eyes on him intensely.

“I need more from you than usual, Crowley. More than when we’ve seen each other previously.”

“I haven’t been to this club in forty years, General. Who says we’ve even seen each other?” Crowley smirked as he extended his hand for the glass.

“Good boy,” Dean almost purred, but his grin was more wolf than feline as he released the glass to its drinker.

“More from me than usual, though?” The whiskey glass sat at Crowley’s lip but remained unsipped.

 

 

“You gave me your loyalty.” Dean’s eyes glinted dangerously as he leaned over the desk, the brown suspenders that crisscrossed his shirt pressed against the wood. “You wouldn’t be thinking of changing your mind?”

Crowley gulped, air rather than whiskey, but managed to exhale slowly.

“Dean,” he placed the drink down, untouched. “I’m not a loyal person. But I’m not a stupid person, either. I’d rather cross Lucifer than you.”

Dean snorted inelegantly. “You’d have to find him first.”

Crowley smirked; Dean rarely slipped up like that. “So, the rumors are true.”

Realizing he’d been caught, an intense stare-down took place across the desk before Dean responded.

“About ten years now.” His voice carried a lot of weight and trust that Crowley didn’t expect.

“You’ve been covering for Lucifer for ten _years_?” Crowley was almost indignant, his chest tipping forward over the desk in surprise as his hand slapped down onto it. “He’s been missing for ten whole years and you just… carried on? Covered it up?”

The nod was slow, almost sad.

“He’s not in Heaven?” Crowley continued. “I thought after he kicked out all the angels….”

Silence sat around them like an itchy blanket for several minutes before Dean reached up to run a hand through his short, blonde-brown hair.

“There aren’t many angels left now. So I need more than the usual. I’m asking for more. A reusable supply.”

Crowley blinked.

“You… want me to _catch_ you an angel,” he stated, suddenly understanding. “They’re almost extinct, so you’re running out of that grace-concoction you pump yourself full of.”

Dean eyed him flatly, fingers brought together in points in front of his mouth. “No. I want you to persuade my brother to _give_ me one. It needs to be… _elegant,_ Crowley.”

That one took Crowley a little longer to work out, but he got there. “You don’t want it to look like you’re taking pity on one by letting it live,” he tried. “All angels are killed on sight, by yours and your brother's orders. But a gift, a prize? That you could keep without arousing suspicion you’re going soft. Smart, Dean.”

“Can you do it?” The question held the weight of Crowley’s life in its intonation.

“Do I have a choice?”

Dean stood again, his constant movement showing the agitation that was almost permanent for the man. His fingers trailed along the empty surface of the desk – he wasn’t a paper person, a planner, an organizer. He may have outranked every asshole on earth, but he didn’t _lead_ them, he wasn’t the _boss._ He terrorized them, lived by his gut. It required less paperwork.

Gliding almost serenely to stand in front of a large painting that took up the left-most wall, Dean’s eyes drifted across the scene that had been brushed there, with no recognition. Green fields and dotted with tiny houses gave way to a softly painted river than meandered through the background. The small white signature in the corner identified it as Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It may as well have been a blank wall. He hummed a tune to himself before the accompanying soft words followed.

_“No reason to get excited, the thief he kindly spoke. There are many here among us, who feel that life is but a joke….”_

 

 

“We have to retaliate! We can’t sit back and take this!” Benny’s fist slammed down onto the table across from Castiel.

They hated each other, the vampire and the angel, their paths only ever crossing over this table here at Camp Chitaqua. Even then, it was too much interaction for either of their tastes.

“Retaliate how?” Castiel asked cooly, reaching up to rub at his temples. “We have so few men left, and even fewer angels. Perhaps it’s time to—”

“Don’t even say it,” Benny spat. “We’re not dragging him into this again.”

The group sat around the wooden kitchen table in the biggest shack on campgrounds, once a rec center of some kind, and watched the two men bicker calmly. This was normal. The humans had seen it their whole lives, and those who lived longer had seen even more of it.

“But maybe if we speak to him, he might see—”

“No, Castiel!” Benny’s anger was so self-righteous, it made Cas’ blood boil.

How could such a creature, such a filthy abomination, as much likely to be on Lucifer’s side as theirs, speak to him so? He felt his wings flare, a snarl tearing at his face until a hand came to rest at his shoulder.

“Cassie. Let it go.”

The voice was calm, almost sad, and Castiel turned to look at the shorter, blonde haired man from which it came.

“You agree with him, Gabriel?” he questioned, the wind taken out of his sails by the simple hand at his shoulder.

“I don’t think we should argue, is all.” Gabriel sounded very young all of a sudden. Castiel was reminded briefly that of them all, Gabriel hurt the most. He had been closest to Michael and Lucifer before, way before, when the Host had been a family. Their feuding tore him apart – he had hidden for thousands of years until forced out to step into his brothers’ messes.

In thanks, he’d watched Lucifer sink a blade into him. Or at least, what Lucifer thought was him.

“Sorry Gabe,” Benny drawled. “You know your brother likes to have his feathers ruffled.”

“I do _not_ —” Castiel snapped, before pulling himself up short at the stricken look on Gabriel’s face. “Alright, Gabriel. We won’t argue.”

Shaking his head, Castiel pulled himself away from the table. They didn’t need him anyway, he was convinced. He’d been lauded as a great tactician once. He’d been told, though he could no longer remember, that he’d led the charge of angels which had raised the Righteous Man from Hell. He’d never met him in the years since the apocalypse, but several angels had let it slip that he’d known the General before. He wished he knew how. He wished he knew why this all felt so personal to him, why everything made him so angry.

Three hundred years of rage were all he could recall. First against the angels that had supported Lucifer, once his mind cleared enough to leave their ranks. Then against the General’s armies who had slaughtered the angels, good and bad, when the Light Bringer had cast them from Heaven. They’d been so foolish, those angels that stood by him. _Doing God’s will,_ they had claimed. _Our Father made him that way, Castiel – there must be a reason…_ What idiots they were. Didn’t the humans call Lucifer the Deceiver?

Feeling the familiar tightness in his wings that signified his great internal urge to tear something apart, Castiel stepped out into the open area that served as the Camp’s training grounds. Perhaps here, among the various species that sparred, he could release some of his stress.

“Castiel.”

Apparently not.

“Yes, Dumah?” His sister angel was fairly prim, but Cas couldn’t bring himself to dislike her. The strain of the last few hundred years showed itself in them all in different ways.

“Will you take this to him, Castiel?” She held a simple bundle that Castiel knew, without opening, would contain food and sanitary supplies. Her raised arm gestured to a distant shack near the perimeter. “You know he’ll only speak to you.”

Sighing, Castiel snatched the bundle somewhat rudely. “Well, none of the rest of you will listen to him. I can’t even get Benny and Gabe to let me ask him—”

“Ah—” Dumah interrupted, holding up a hand, “the less you tell me, Castiel, the easier it is for me to deny all knowledge when you go against them and ask him anyway.”

A flicker of mild amusement passed through Castiel’s mind—the first for days, though it never reached his face.

She wasn’t wrong, of course.

 

 

Castiel couldn’t remember anyone mentioning that Prophets were immortal. But, his memory being what it was, he couldn’t rule it out. He contemplated it as he watched Chuck pick through the bag of supplies he’d brought into the small hut.

“Toilet paper,” Chuck announced with some glee, adding the two new rolls to his small stack on a shelf. The guy was kind of weird, it had to be said, but Castiel believed him harmless.

“Are they feeding you enough, Chuck?” Castiel enquired with a tilt to his head, taking in the Prophet’s skinny frame.

“Yes, Cas.” The scrawny, middle-aged man with a greying beard (that had been greying—but not fully grey—for at least three hundred years that Cas knew of) looked up at him with a slightly fond smile. “They feed me fine. I forget to eat, but that’s not their fault.”

“You aren’t a prisoner, you know,” Cas intoned solemnly, not doing so well at concealing his frustration.

“I know,” Chuck replied, as calm as he always seemed – in Cas’ presence, at least. “I’m just an unknown. I scare them.”

Forced to concede that point, Castiel nodded slowly as he lowered himself to perch on the end of Chuck’s unmade bed. With a sigh, he turned his hands over, focused lazily on them like he wasn’t really seeing. After a few minutes, he felt the bed dip beside him.

“What is it, son?”

Chuck had always called him that, as much as he could remember since the apocalypse. Castiel didn’t know why, but he didn’t challenge it. They were all family here, and he was more fond of the Prophet than he was of many outside. Reaching up to rub at the back of his neck, Cas’ sigh came again.

“They killed Samandriel,” he confessed with a sad smile.

Chuck nodded slowly, patting Castiel quite awkwardly on the shoulder as he responded. “I know. I felt it happen. I’m sorry, Castiel.”

Unsurprised, Cas fell quiet. The minutes ticked on, marked by a dented alarm clock that sat on the opposite side of the room, far from the bed.

“So, are you going to ask me again?” Chuck filled the space quietly, meeting Cas ferocious blue eyes without fear. “Is that why you came?”

A long exhale that almost shook Cas’ frame gave a few seconds pause before his answer.

“Dumah sent me, but… yes, I wanted to ask again,” Cas admitted.

“Then ask,” Chuck intoned solemnly, a sad smile curling the corner of his mouth as the two sat together, one hand still on Castiel’s shoulder.

“How does this end?” It was a whisper.

“With death.” Chuck’s response wasn’t dramatic or flippant, just filled with the kind of sorrow that only those who live far too long have time to gather. 

 

 

Crowley turned the collar of his dark wool coat up against the wind. Inclining his head wordlessly, he left Dean at the door to The Pit, heading off down 2nd Street on foot until he was just a speck in the distance.

Dean turned back into the club, looping one thumb idly into his suspenders as he swung his feet slowly back down the stairs, walking with much more fanfare than was necessary. By the time he reached the bottom, all eyes in the room were on him.

A wolfish grin spread over Dean’s mouth, his pretty lips pulling back to show his teeth. His eyes, green like candy apples, drifted over the patrons assembled in the bar area. He wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, just taking in how many people were there that night and what kind of performance was necessary – for it felt like every day of Dean’s life was a performance of some sort. It was knowing what kind of show to put on that gave him so much power.

The hand that hung loosely at his side held a single toothpick. Bringing it up to his mouth, he slipped it between his teeth, his grin causing the tiny piece of wood to jackknife up at an angle next to his cheek. His arms slowly raised in the air like a starter at a drag race.

The room waited, breath bated, for him to speak.

“What are you all waiting for? It’s a good day, let the celebrations begin!”

Releasing a wild howl, he jumped from the last step, bending his knees so that he bounced up to stand on the edge of the nearby pool table.

With a kick, he pocketed the 8-ball.

All around him people—humans, creatures, worse—whooped and yelled, glad that the fearsome General was in a partying mood. True, when he was in a partying mood people likely still died… but less, and in this life, they’d take what they could get.


	2. Motor City Madhouse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No particular warnings needed for this chapter that I know about, but if you think I should add anything please let me know!
> 
> With thanks to my lovely beta, [Cassie.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erudite12/pseuds/CR%20Noble)
> 
> Leave me a comment and let me know how you think the story is developing, or any predictions you have for where we're going ;)
> 
> Mal <3

 

1983 Main Street was reasonably upscale compared to its neighbors. Known only as “The Madhouse”, there were no signs or placards to let on what the building’s name should actually be. Although it looked like a restaurant, its ordinance didn’t list it as one, and it certainly stayed open long past the time of any respectable establishment. The only thing everyone did know for sure about it was that on certain nights, Sam Winchester came to visit.

As Lucifer’s second General, he ranked equally with his brother Dean and the way he chose to live showed it. It was said he preferred the Madhouse—a classier joint compared to the rowdier places downtown—having no wish to mingle with demons of little intelligence and violent demeanor. Where his brother was a blunt instrument, Sam was a scalpel, a misplaced word, a poison ring. Enemies never saw him coming. Where Dean ruled with fear, Sam ruled with a smile—and oh, how much more terrifying that could be.

With his white suit and easy laugh, the way his personality could spin three hundred and sixty degrees in seconds was frightening. One moment there could be a soft word, a grin, a chuckle of camaraderie… the next a blade in the heart, a bloodied body, and a cheerful hum.

Sam and Dean were different, it was true - but both left more bodies in their wake than any other creature whispered about in the dark. It was said that when they got together, whole towns were wiped out. The only thing more frightening than their arguments was their idea of entertainment.

At The Madhouse, Sam held a private table near the back which was always kept open for him. The cotton tablecloths kept the atmosphere crisp and sterile while sparkling chandeliers illuminated the glittering gowns of the most beautiful patrons. Sam conducted his business privately, silencing anyone who came near with a look or an offer of a drink—the second far deadlier.

The reputation of the place and its rumored occupant in mind, the demon Crowley entered The Madhouse with trepidation. He came here much less often than The Pit; his tentative alliance with Dean more robust than any arrangement he held with his younger brother.

If he had been made to choose, Crowley would have thought Dean more likely to kill him, although Sam scared him a whole lot more. Dean was predictable, for the most part. Sam was a petrifying wildcard.

He supposed before, he had been closer to Dean—not that either brother remembered that.

Crowley’s demonic nature allowed him to see the true measure of Sam—still human like his brother, still hopped up on Lucifer's power and the gross mixture of demon blood and grace that fed him like his brother. But Sam had one other, extra-special ingredient to add to his crazy; he lacked a soul. Why Lucifer had found it entertaining to rip it out, Crowley had no means of knowing—but it was just one of the many tortures he knew had been inflicted upon Sam before he became what he was now.

Spotting the gleam of his white suit at the far back table, Crowley clutched at the small vial of demon blood and single red rose that were both in his left hand. While Dean had more of a taste for the grace in their little mixture—nicknamed the Hyde potion by the few who knew of it—Sam was much more entranced by the demon blood. As an ex-King of Hell, Crowley’s own talents weren’t to be sniffed at. But the demon blood gave Sam horrifying magical powers which not only challenged, but totally eclipsed, Crowley’s own.

With a deep breath Crowley stepped up to the table, his black hat removed respectfully with his empty hand.

“General,” he deferred to Sam, lowering his head though he kept his eyes on the man, noting that his brown hair was styled a little longer than the last time they’d met.

His brow creasing with curiosity, Sam nodded back to him. “Crowley… it’s been an age, oh fallen King,” he began mockingly. “Why are you ruining a good thing, hmm?”

Sam’s lip curled up in an amused grin at his own words, but he extended a hand to pluck the rose and vial that Crowley carried straight out of his hand.

“You brought presents, too. My, you must really want something, huh?” Sam continued, the glint in his eyes a little curious now.

Crowley nodded before pointedly eyeing the other occupants of Sam’s table. He knew the demons Meg and Ruby, but the two men were a mystery. He had to play his cards right here. He didn’t want to do it on a blind bet. The two he didn’t recognize had to go.

“I’ve been to see your brother,” he offered nonchalantly, watching for the reaction.

There it was—a tiny twitch in just the two least used fingers of Sam’s right hand, the pinky and the ring jerking almost imperceptibly. He’d caught him off guard.

 

 

It had been barely two days since Castiel had last gone to visit Chuck, but he found his feet at the Prophet’s door once more. He knocked, though he knew it wouldn’t be locked nor his presence unwelcome.

“Chuck? It’s Castiel,” he called, though he didn’t know why. Chuck could probably count his regular visitors on just a couple of fingers.

The door opened, and Chuck stepped aside, admitting Castiel into the dim light. He seemed more on edge than usual, ushering Cas into the tumbledown hut but not offering him any verbal greeting.

“Chuck, what’s wrong?” Castiel asked softly, stepping cautiously towards him after he shut the door. “Did something happen? Did you have a vision?”

“Not exactly,” Chuck offered with an awkward smile. “You’re here to say goodbye, so that means you’re leading the Garrison out again. Why, Cas?”

Standing a couple of feet from each other, Castiel felt strangely cowed by the smaller man.

“Because…” Castiel trailed off, feeling utterly deflated. “I don’t even know anymore, Chuck. I just can’t give up.”

The Prophet regarded him slightly sadly, his wrinkled brow carrying regret that Cas couldn’t explain. “That’s what makes you one of the best, Castiel.”

“The best at losing,” Castiel made an exasperated huffing noise, lowering himself down to the end of Chuck’s mattress in defeat. “I don’t know why we fight anymore, Chuck. We save a few people here and there. But the bigger picture? Lucifer and his Generals won years ago. We all know it.”

“So, why is it you all keep going?” Chuck prodded gently, lowering himself down next to Cas, his familiar spot when they had these moments.

“We don’t have any other option. Fighting back or rolling over and dying isn’t a choice, it’s just delaying the inevitable. Logic says that we should give up on the Generals, admit that our time is done and try to live out our lives somewhere hidden, peacefully. But there’s something in me that won’t allow it, Chuck. It just feels…” Castiel studied his hands almost forlornly as he trailed off.

“Personal?” Chuck offered quietly, his own blue eyes raising to meet Castiel’s.

“That sounds silly, doesn’t it?” Castiel stated, reaching to rub the back of his neck. “Maybe I’ve just finally lost too many people. Maybe I’m crazy.”

Chuck regarded him sadly for another moment before he folded his arms.

“Do you remember anything about meeting them, Castiel? The Generals?” It was a sudden question, but Chuck seemed to have none of the vagueness that possessed him when he often came out with his prophetic words.

“No,” Castiel replied. “If I did, maybe there’d be something I could use against them, use to fix this, but I have nothing. I think Naomi, well... It doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

Chuck hummed, a thoughtful sound before he responded. “What if it turned out they weren’t how you thought?”

Cas raised an eyebrow. “If they weren’t monsters, you mean? I suppose then I’d feel sorry for them and sorry for whatever Lucifer did to make them this way, but I can’t see how that could be so.”

Chuck nodded firmly, almost decisively, before he raised a hand to Castiel’s back. Resting it between his shoulder blades, he rubbed a small, almost comforting circle. It was an odd sensation to Castiel as if Chuck was somehow ruffling his wings like one would ruffle a cat’s fur.

The Prophet stood suddenly, clearing his throat and holding out a hand to Castiel. “Good luck, son.”

Cas reached to shake his hand, a little confused, and found himself pulled into a tight, desperate feeling hug. Chuck’s sudden whispered words barely reached his ear.

“No matter what happens, Castiel, I’m behind you.”

Castiel smiled down at Chuck. He had so few friends these days that he’d overlook the Prophet’s oddness whenever he had to. Nodding his departure, he stepped back towards the door.

His mind already occupied with how to perfect Balthazar’s wing positioning, so he could bank more quickly on his turns, he didn’t hear Chuck’s last words.

“... and I’m sorry.”

 

 

While Crowley wasn’t impressed with the company, there were worse places to be of a night than sat shotgun in a tricked-out Aston Martin Vantage. Crowley didn’t call himself a car person, but he knew this one was beautiful. The car roared outrageously—a throaty, happy sound—as Sam drove fearlessly with the windows down. Detroit was his town. It wasn’t so much that he feared nothing here, it was that everything here feared him.

Sam didn’t talk much after dismissing his companions at The Madhouse, merely standing and motioning for Crowley to follow. Where they were headed, the demon had no clue—clearly Sam didn’t want to risk anyone overhearing, even his supposedly trusted associates. Crowley felt a lot of eyes on him as he left, and he wondered how many enemies that short walk had made him. As if he wasn’t on shaky ground already, living in the grey space between the Generals as he did.

They presented a united front to most of the world, Lucifer’s two happy puppets, Sam and Dean Winchester. But Crowley knew better. From his not-friendship with Dean, he’d noticed that something had happened a decade past that got between the brothers. From that point on, Crowley’s association with them both had become many times more dangerous. He had stayed away from Sam as much as he could from that time, until now.

“What game is my brother playing?”

Sam’s voice was raised over the sound of the engine and an old Ted Nugent song. This was his plan it seemed, to talk to Crowley on the move so no one could overhear.

Crowley had put a lot of thought into how he could do this, but he still had little to go on other than carefully measured honesty.

“Dean wants an angel. A live one,” he stated, his eyes carefully on the road in front of them as Sam spun south out of the city, neither slowing down nor caring to stop at lights.

Sam knew the implications, of course. The same grotesque elixir sustained him as it did his brother - how else could two men, human at their core, still be alive? By Crowley’s count, they were both three hundred and thirty-something years old. The lightning-shot of power and rejuvenation that came from the spelled combination of demon blood and grace, administered directly into the vein or supped like a shot, kept them young and rabid.

“Why should I care?” Sam asked after a pause so long Crowley had to take a moment to connect his words to their previous exchange.

“Because,” Crowley offered with a slight smile, keeping his eyes fixed on the swiftly passing tarmac, “you know your time is running out, Sam. There’s only a handful of angels left, you’ve done the math. You know what Dean will do if he ever starts slipping again.”

Crowley left it there. It was the only card he had to play. He sat perfectly still in his seat, wanting to betray nothing, hoping that Sam could tell what he was inferring without Crowley having to explicitly state the things he knew, things that were dangerous for him to know.

Ten years before, when the brothers’ familial breakup had occurred, Dean had—as Crowley had referred to it - started slipping. Something had begun nudging at his memories, swimming to the surface, causing him to begin exhibiting moments of guilt, indecision, even  _ care _ . Dean Winchester, General of the Light Bringer, wasn’t supposed to care about anything.

Crowley even thought that perhaps a few memories had surfaced, memories of  _ before _ , that had caused Dean to start to lose it. He’d threatened to find Sam’s soul, to lead his brother along the same path. Sam had taken quick steps to eliminate the problem, seeing those emotions and memories as a curse that distracted his brother. Dean was soon back to his terrifying self and yet, something had changed.

Whatever Sam had done, Dean never forgave.

Crowley didn’t know enough details to tease this out any further. He was playing his game with only half a hand, but he knew the hand was powerful. So, he plastered on his poker face and waited for Sam’s move.

Another mile or so, somewhere outside of Detroit in an endless field of abandoned factories, Sam slowed into the side of the road and cut the music and the engine, the beautiful car’s throaty purr fading out into the empty night.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Crowley.” Suddenly Sam’s eyes swiveled from the road to rest on the demon. “Why?”

“What other kind of game is there now?” Crowley held Sam’s gaze almost defiantly. “If you and Dean lose your mojo, fade to the years like every other human, then what do I have? You think I don’t have a hand in this, too?”

Crowley let a little of his anger show in his voice, working to convince Sam of his carefully selected truth.

“If I don’t ally myself with you and Dean, then the only other option is Lucifer. I’ve been there. I don’t want to do it again. Unless, of course, you’re suggesting I repent?” Crowley’s lip curved up with a dark note of death-row humor as he finished.

A low laugh tumbled from Sam. “God is dead, they say. I don’t think you’d have much chance at repenting. The angels would kill you on sight.”

“Indeed,” Crowley agreed quietly.

They sat in silence in the car, listening to the nothingness of the night around them. Animals and birds seemed to know to avoid Detroit, Crowley suddenly realized. Perhaps that was wise.

“Alright,” Sam began, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “You want me to give Dean an angel, I’ll put on my best hat and let the world know he deserves a prize. But I want something in return.”

Crowley didn’t need to eat. At that moment he was grateful because the way his stomach flipped over, he could have easily vomited all over the exquisite Aston Martin interior. He expected Sam would negotiate of course - but that didn’t make it any less terrifying.

“What do you want, Sam?” Crowley didn’t bother hiding the fear in his voice - he knew Sam would delight in hearing it.

“I need a new home for my most precious possession,” the General purred evilly, fixing Crowley with a vicious, taunting glare.

He was daring him to say yes.

 


	3. Lord of This World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Specific Warnings** : Trigger Warnings for increasing violence in this chapter, including eye gore.
> 
> \---
> 
> The chapter titles in this fic all come from song titles, specifically relating to something that the character is listening to or the overall vibe of the scene. Some of them even contain little clues as to what's coming. So, in the chapter notes, I'll make a note of what they are.  
> This chapter, "Lord of This World" is, of course, titled for the Black Sabbath song of the same name. It's very Dean, at this point.  
> 

During the day, The Pit was usually as quiet as death. The metaphor was accurate enough, as even death had extenuating circumstances where it just didn’t apply. Or at least it had ever since Lucifer rose.

There was a tenseness to the low volume of The Pit, and Dean could almost sense the noise coming.

 _It’s going to be one of those days,_ he mused as he racked up another triangle full of pool balls. Humming a classic guitar riff quietly under his breath, he focused on getting the balls just right on the table before he looked up to see who’d opened the door and clattered noisily down the iron steps to interrupt him without prior permission.

His cool green eyes were met with the sight of a fairly small woman in a denim jacket, her badly dyed hair pulled back from her face in a ponytail. She had shifty dark brown eyes and an almost perpetual smirk.

“Hey Dean-o,” she purred, her tone dripping with false enthusiasm.

“Meg,” Dean grunted flatly, returning his attention to his pool game. “You’re a long way from Detroit.”

“Chicago’s not bad in the spring,” she offered thoughtfully, her eyes roving around the room and taking in the assorted demons, vampires, and cruel humans that shuffled about, a mish-mash of ill-fitting suits and tipped hats to the General.

“Yes, but you already knew that, so why are you here?” There was a sharp _crack_ as Dean hit the white ball, breaking up the other balls on the table and pocketing two out of the gate.

Meg rolled her eyes dramatically, her arms folding across her chest. “To broker an invitation for your brother, of course. He killed the angel Samandriel last week. Based on intel that you provided, I hear.”

Dean knew that not to be true; he’d known nothing about Samandriel, which he was sure Meg was aware of. _This is about the other thing then,_ he thought with satisfaction.

“Well, anything to help out my brother,” he responded coolly as he chalked up his pool cue. “I suppose he wants to celebrate?”

“Of course.” The chunky heel of one of Meg’s boots tapped against the edge of the very last iron step. She came no further into the room. “He’ll be driving down towards Kansas City in a couple of weeks. He’ll practically be heading past your door, Dean-o.”

While that wasn’t quite true, it was near enough and it worked.

“Then he’s welcome,” Dean responded with a quick nod. “I’m sure Dagon can take care of the details with you before then.”

Dismissively, Dean moved to take his next pool shot, returning to humming a few bars of an old Black Sabbath tune, but he paused, his cue balanced on the edge of the table.

The demon turned and began heading back up the iron stairs.

“Oh, and Meg?”

She turned to look at Dean over her shoulder, her eyes questioning.  
  
When Dean looked up at her, a strange darkness had glazed the whites of his eyes. While not the solid color that many types of demon showed, it was an eerie, smoky black that indicated a creature far more threatening.

“Never stroll onto my property without my express permission again.”

Dean’s curled lip released a voice several octaves lower than it had been even seconds before. Several people around the room began to whisper, those who knew better did not.

The whispers called it Dean’s Beast; the inner power that rolled out of him when his anger showed or when he was particularly sadistic. Many thought it made him a demon - they were wrong, but it worked for his purposes.

Looking to his eyes, Meg nodded quietly, her snark muted by the same signs she often saw in her own master. When Dean finally dropped his gaze from her, she disappeared up the stairs and away as fast as her short legs would carry her.

With a deep growl, Dean reached forward and brought his cue down against the edge of the table, splintering it into pieces.

Holding their breath, the occupants of the room watched as he struggled against the Beast.

“Staring is rude,” The General barked at the nearest human, a ruddy-cheeked man in a suit that was far too long. Hauling him up to his face, Dean breathed across the quivering man’s cheek. “Looks like your mother didn’t teach you any manners, so it’s up to me.”

Dean's smoky eyes burned darker. He straightened out the arm that held the human by the neck so that he dangled above the ground, his toes frantically scrambling for purchase as he made desperate choking sounds.

Swinging his arm down, Dean slammed the man down onto his back on the pool table. Dean’s face was entirely blank as he brought his other hand, still holding the sharp remains of his pool cue, up to the terrified man’s face.

“Staring is rude,” he repeated quite softly, though his words were almost lost amongst the man’s screams as the wood splintered into the side of his eye socket.

The General dug and twisted with an unnerving precision.

First one eyeball, then the other, popped out onto the pool table.

When the man’s scream suddenly cut off under a crunch of Dean’s hand at his neck, the room didn’t make even a sound.

The body slumped to the ground, ignored, as Dean calmly reached for another pool cue.

Lining up his shot with precision, the smoky-eyed General pocketed first the left eyeball, then the right.

“ _Have you ever thought about your soul, can it be saved? Or perhaps you think that when you’re dead, you just stay in your grave?_ ” Dean sang, moving on with his game contentedly.

  

 

Shafts of sunlight made their way through the high windows above Crowley.

The small bar where he sat was one of his favorite places to gather his thoughts. It was a spot abandoned a long time ago, not used since _before_ and miraculously untouched by the chaos that followed. The place was still relatively clean, the electricity still worked, the supply of alcohol within still shockingly plentiful – only the humans were gone, no owner or bar worker in sight for many, many years. It was peaceful and totally away from the horrors outside, as if at some point it had been touched by God himself.

Crowley removed his black bowler hat and placed it on the bar top next to him. He reached over, rooting around behind the counter awkwardly from his stretched position. After a minute of exploration, Crowley found a solid, square bottle with a thin neck that felt, most definitely, like a bottle of Jack Daniels. _Not the best_ , he considered _, but beggars can’t be choosers._

He wondered when he’d become a beggar, instead of a chooser. Was it when Lucifer rose and his post as the King of Hell failed to hold any relevance? Or had it been sometime before that, when the cursed humanity within him, that now caused him so many problems, had been poked and prodded at by those Winchesters? That was an event the brothers couldn’t even recall, the demon noted bitterly, much like most of his interactions with them _before_. He didn’t know for sure what had caused his current misfortune, but he resented it nonetheless.

Leaning across the bar further so he could get a better hold on the bottle, he almost dropped it entirely when a throat cleared behind him, breaking the silence.

This bar had been silent for years.

But now, there was a short man with a greying beard and a faded corduroy jacket moving from behind Crowley, stepping up to the bar.

“Carver Edlund?” Crowley asked in confusion. “ _Supernatural_ Carver Edlund? Shouldn’t you be dead?”

Not waiting for an answer, he plopped back onto his bar stool, successfully retrieved Jack in hand.

“They’ll let any old hack be immortal these days, I guess,” Crowley finished snidely, taking a quick gulp before he generously slid the bottle down the bar towards the surprisingly-alive writer.

The skinny man smiled, reacting outwardly to the insult as he eased onto the stool next to the demon. He reached for the whiskey bottle that had been shunted in front of him, taking a big swig before passing it back.

A few minutes of silence passed before he spoke up.

“People call me Chuck actually, if you recall.” Chuck’s lip quirked slightly at one end. “Fergus, wasn’t it? Fergus MacLeod. A fine Scottish name for a rather pathetic, weaselly little man.”

Crowley spluttered. “Excuse me?!”

“The worst part is you sold your soul for an extra three inches and it’s _still_ not that impressive.” Calmly, Chuck took the bottle back from Crowley’s frozen hand, dragging another drink down its neck to his lips.

“Oh… the Prophet, right?” Crowley remembered weakly, a slightly fearful smile passing over his lips.

“Try again,” Chuck grinned. “Go ahead, it’ll be fun. Guess.”

Crowley’s dark eyes narrowed. “You’re not a demon or an angel, I can’t see wings…”

Chuck’s smile was slightly mocking, if anything. “Oh… Crowley. You see what I want you to see.”

The demon’s brow furrowed. “I don’t even know what game we’re playing, Chuck. Why are you here?”

Chuck lowered the bottle back to the bar for a moment, before reconsidering and thrusting it firmly back into Crowley’s hand. “Here – you’re going to need this,” he grinned.

Slowly, the bar around Crowley seemed to fade into the background as the unassuming little man in front of him began to _glow_ , ethereal white light throbbing and taking over the whole room.

Somewhere between terror and awe, Crowley dropped from his bar-stool to his knees.

“Oh, God!” the demon cried in surprise, blinking.

“Exactly,” Chuck purred with a smile.

 

 

 

The Pit was beginning to fill with people for the evening, the hum of voices and the tinkling of glasses making the retro decor feel more natural. The silks and lace of the newly arriving patrons were a minor distraction from the mutilated corpse that lay perhaps twenty feet from the bar. They stepped over the man.

 _“Dale, from the gun supply”_ , they whispered knowingly and went about their business of dancing, drinking, and forgetting.

The General sat at a card table, his eyes calm, studying the poker faces of his companions. He looked up sharply as the door swung open with a loud bang, a scowl already on his features. The expression passed to a concerned curiosity as no footsteps immediately came down the stairs.

Once a couple of seconds had passed, the voices around him quieted as many of his customers and friends followed his gaze.

After what seemed like far too long, a tremendous clattering began, just out of sight at the top of the iron stairwell. It was almost immediately explained as the body of a woman, the bouncer from outside, rolled down the stairs head over heels. She landed at the bottom in a macabre splay, legs and arms at unnatural angles around her bloodied face, her widely slit neck rapidly spreading a large puddle of red across the floor.

Everyone initially froze, the silence in the room oddly highlighted by the suddenly loud-seeming Van Halen song that crooned over the old speakers at the bar.

Dean rose from his table cautiously, his eyes on the stairs, ignoring the dead woman gushing blood over his tiled floor. His companions began to rise with him, guns cocking and blades sliding from sleeves.

“Guns.” Dean’s hand went to his hip, where a leather holster held an old Colt pistol. He looked at it thoughtfully, before reconsidering. He jerked his head to the thick-bodied and yellow-eyed demon to his left. “Bring me the big boys, Azazel. We’ve got visitors.”

Dean reached into the breast pocket of his smart suit jacket. A couple of other patrons who had some sense did the same. He pulled out a green silk handkerchief, shaking it out into a triangle and tying it to roughly cover his mouth and nose, before grabbing his smart black hat from the table and shoving it back onto his head.

His actions were on the mark; moments later a metallic clatter indicated a steel cylinder, maybe six inches long, tumbling down the stairs just as the body had moments before.

“Down!” the barman yelled, skidding down behind the counter with his hands over his eyes. “They’re gonna smoke us out!”

There was a pop as the cylinder went off, dumping toxic smoke into the air.

Chaos.

High-heels and dancing shoes stampeded towards the exit, shrieks and curses of pain filling the air as the smoke stung eyes and seeped into lungs.

“Azazel!” Dean yelled out, his eyes turning a cloudy black once more as he reached to his side, grabbing the shoulder of his right-hand demon. Hauling him up close so he could hear over the commotion, Dean barked orders. “Get me a bullet-stopper. Then head straight downstairs and get every man we have up here.”

Nodding through the smoke, Azazel was already fashioning a bandana across his face, his yellow eyes watering over the top of it from the sting. Leaping over a nearby table that had been overturned in the confusion, he reached for the shoulder of a familiar face.

“Slave!” Azazel growled. He’d never learned the names of any of the General’s possessions; they existed merely to fetch and carry or to provide pleasure, they didn’t need names.

The brown-haired young girl with wide chocolatey eyes looked up at him with the resigned blankness of a conditioned slave. “Sir,” she recognized Azazel at once.

“You just got promoted to General’s bullet-stopper,” he laughed thickly, the sound bubbly and grotesque in this throat.

Dean was already headed across the room to the iron steps, so Azazel pushed the girl hard towards him to have her catch up. Grasping one of her shoulders as she almost bumped into him, Dean nodded to Azazel. “Load up, get backup, and get up top, Yellow-Eyes.”

 

 

 

Crowley spun a soft, dark feather between his fingers. Its length was about that of his palm, slightly curled and fluffy at the bottom. A covert feather, Chuck had called it. Its smoky black color was stark against Crowley’s pale hand. Even with his power at an all-time-low, even separated from its angel, Crowley could feel the feather thrum with an odd power.

“And Castiel has to be the one?” Crowley asked quietly, his eyes completely caught by the surprisingly heavy feather.

“I didn’t want it to be him. He’s the best of them all, really. But he’s also the only one who I think has a chance of ending this,” Chuck sighed quietly. “About ten years ago, I sent a soul down from Heaven. I thought he’d be able to reach one of them.”

Crowley’s eyebrow quirked. “Ten years ago? That’s when everything started changing,” he pondered curiously. “Who did you send?”

“Bobby Singer,” Chuck replied. His voice betrayed no emotion, but his hand came up off the bar and his thumb and forefinger snapped, materializing a couple of glasses of scotch in front of himself and the demon. “Have a decent drink, it’ll help.”

Crowley made a throaty moan of thankful relief as he quickly gulped down the aged Glencraig that graced his glass.

Chuck continued, looking off into space rather than at Crowley. “I thought Bobby would be able to remind them who they were. It worked a little, it seems – something jogged parts of Dean’s memory. I didn’t plan for Sam to find out so quickly though, for him to take Bobby from Dean.”

Crowley seemed curious. “But, if you’ll forgive me pointing this out, aren’t you supposed to know everything? Shouldn’t fixing this be… easy? For you?”

Crowley vaguely gestured in the air, miming Chuck’s previous snapping motion.

Chuck looked irritated if anything. “Sure, everything is always _my_ job. It’s not like I gave you guys free will for a reason.”

“Oh,” Crowley responded quietly, wishing desperately he had more whiskey. “I guess I should apologize for my entire life then?”

Chuck snorted, but once he was done shaking his head, he smiled. “No, Crowley. I mean, you can if you want. But I’ll tell you a secret… not everyone in the world was meant to end up good and perfect. You were only meant to make your own destiny. A balance works better, I eventually learned. I tried to make all the angels good, you know. Look what happened to Lucifer, even to Michael. Free will is better.”

Chuck paused for few moments, his eyes lingering on the feather in Crowley’s hand before he continued his explanation.

“Out there,” he gestured up to the sky and the cosmos vaguely. “My power is limitless. But down here… I created belief. My power here is limited by _belief,_ Crowley. When Lucifer and Michael fought, and Michael lost, many humans lost faith in me. They thought that a world in which there was such chaos, couldn’t possibly be the work of a true and just God. Maybe they were right. But the worse it got, the harder it became for me to help. Now… now all I can do is try to nudge things in the right direction.”

“So, Tinkerbell syndrome,” Crowley smirked slightly. “You need people to believe in you.”

“If it entertains you to think of it that way, yes.”

Crowley nodded slowly, feeling a little braver, though his eyes stayed resolutely tied to the safety of his whiskey glass. “If I do this, will you help me in turn?”

Chuck eyed him levelly, his expression unreadable, but he didn’t interrupt.

“Sam’s soul,” Crowley continued, doing only a moderately good job of concealing the fear in his voice. “He’s looking to _rehome_ it. I think it almost destroyed its last vessel. Whatever Lucifer did to it, it’s an abomination now. It’s poison. Maybe once upon a time, I’d have taken it without thinking. For power or influence, but…”

Crowley trailed off, his fingers running nervously up and down the ridges in the side of the crystal glass between his hands.

Chuck smiled almost gently at the demon, something akin to pride ghosting across his eyes as the glass began to refill.

“There are ways I can help with that, that I can protect you from the corruption. But I think you know what they are— you just want me to reassure you that it’s possible.” Chuck gave the demon a crooked, almost encouraging smile. “It is, Crowley. You can do this, or I wouldn’t be here.”

Crowley nodded. The tiniest bit of hope flared in his chest, and he let out a breath he felt he’d been holding for three hundred years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for stopping by, sweet readers! What do you think of this awful Dean? Do you think there's any of the Dean we know and love left in there?


	4. Run Like Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back again, for chapter four! 
> 
> This one is fairly violent, aggressive and gun-filled. Other than that, no specific warnings here. But as ever, just because things aren't my triggers don't mean they aren't yours, so please let me know if anything needs tagging.
> 
> As with all of the chapters, this one is named after a song that either plays in the chapter or is in some way relevant to it. This one is Pink Floyd's "Run Like Hell".
> 
> Thank you for reading, friends! 
> 
> The art in this chapter is by the amazing [migglangelus.](http://migglangelus.tumblr.com/) Miggles is an amazing person and awesome artist, and I'm delighted to be able to share this picture with you, I've been sitting on it for a long time!
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> [For Ellen_of_Oz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllenOfOz/pseuds/EllenOfOz)  
>  **  
> 

 

 

 ****  
Pushing the young woman in front of himself as a shield, the General headed up the iron staircase and out into the meager light of the early Chicago evening. The street outside the Pit bustled with sounds. From the noise of screaming and gunfire to more subtle tones that, over the years, Dean’s ears had come oddly attuned to; the sound of flesh hitting flesh in primitive fist-to-fist combat, guns clicking and rattling as they were reloaded and shouldered, and the soft sound of wings.   
  
It turned out, Dean’s army had discovered during the apocalypse, that there were creatures other than angels that had wings.   
  
It wasn’t something that Dean had even thought about _before_ . Angels had wings; they were huge, overwhelming feathered appendages that towered above any man, and mostly they kept them hidden from people’s eyes in another dimension just beyond the reach of human sight.   
  
But there were other creatures, vile demonic creatures like harpies, tengu, and sirin that had wings too.   
  
Both of the Generals had tempted as many of those breeds into their ranks as possible during their long wars. The creature’s flight abilities made it much easier for them to hunt down the many hundreds of angels that had initially fallen to Earth when Lucifer took Heaven. These days, when there was so much infighting, it was getting harder and harder to tell who was on who’s side.   
  
The only thing all the races, alliances, and families could agree on was the angels. The angels and the liberated humans that supported them were to be hunted and exterminated. Those were Lucifer's orders, carried out through his ruthless generals.   
  
Dean observed several winged species in the crowd that bustled outside the door of The Pit. The tengu could pass for a long-nosed human, but the harpies and sirin were easier to spot, preferring their part-avian forms now that there was no need to hide on Earth. Their presence made this incursion a little more serious and challenging to deal with than any of the other recent petty battles that had graced these Chicago streets—usually just one crime family fought against another, or someone angry at the General’s latest murder.   
  
It wasn’t a rare event for there to be trouble at the Pit. Outside of the city though, the Chicago area was an abandoned dust-bowl. There was very little else for entertainment, so people who weren’t welcome on the right side of the tracks, turned back to a bar that was definitely on the wrong side.   
  
The sound of gunshots rang out around Dean, smattered with growling and slashing as the baser instincts of many of his demon companions came out to play. With his own eyes dark and dangerous, he held up his quivering human shield in front of him as he stepped sideways out of the door, chips of brickwork flying off the wall around him as bullets scattered.   
  
Most of the patrons ran off down the street to wherever they called home, screaming and shrieking in terror as they were caught in the crossfire.   
  
Dean became aware of Azazel thundering up the stairs to his right, followed by several other people from the compound below the club. There was a metallic clicking sound as Azazel hurried to his side, ducking his head behind Dean’s nameless slave-shield, her screams punctuating their conversation.   
  
“I got all your favorites, boss. What’s the plan?” Azazel’s yellow eyes gleamed with excitement at the chaos around him. He pressed a beautifully refurbished tommy gun into Dean’s hands. It was one of the General’s most prized possessions. An assortment of other weapons were strapped across the demon’s back, and he crouched still while Dean liberated him of a Remington pump-action shotgun to join the tommy gun and the colt that Dean always carried. He juggled the weapons smoothly, strapping them about his body familiarly and settling just the tommy gun into his hands. 

 

 

Edging up next to them was Alastair, a skinny-faced older demon that Dean despised, but couldn’t argue with the track record of. When he needed someone killed or tortured, Alastair was the guy.  
  
“Looks like we’ve got Wings, boss,” Alistair said.   
  
Alastair had a hoarse, sing-song voice that sent shivers through even the likes of Dean, at least when his eyes were clear; when the beast of Lucifer’s magic ghosted over Dean’s eyes though, it just irritated him.   
  
“You brought something to help?” Dean snapped, black-eyed.   
  
“Of course,” Alastair purred creepily. He slid a wooden crate across the street towards Dean, containing what looked like little bottles of oil stopped with rags. Where they crouched, two workers from the bar dragged a thick wooden barricade from the center of the road towards them. The routine of protecting the bar was familiar, if somewhat terrifying for the employees.   
  
The woman Dean held up in front of himself as a shield, a slave of which he didn’t even know the name, gave a gurgling scream as one of the flying bullets finally found her chest. Tossing her aside without a thought, Dean scurried forward and spun, his back to the hastily erected barricade and a gun in each hand.   
  
“Alright, boys!” Dean yelled with barely concealed glee. “Let’s get ‘em!”

 

 

  
  
The Garrison touched down on top of a large building that had once housed an upscale department store, the gaudy fixings in the windows long gone and the entrances boarded up. The area of Chicago they landed in was familiar to them all. They had fought many battles there since the oldest of the Generals took up residence in the city.   
  
Castiel hated it here, on this filthy, familiar ground.   
  
Fighting on the ground, in the streets, had been a standard part of their training for the past two hundred years. It had become essential since the war had moved inwards from the countryside when supplies began to dry up. Now, the mob mentality that civil war can bring, family against family, resource against resource, kept most people huddled into the cities. To leave the built-up areas and go out into the open brought death from Lucifer’s newly-created winged demons above. To stay risked execution or serfdom under the Generals. Life on Earth was miserable, no matter what flavor it came in.   
  
Castiel landed first, wordless as his troops were conditioned far beyond needing basic instructions. He felt the air rustle to his left as Gabriel settled onto the roof with a soft thump, a similar sound indicating Balthazar’s landing on his right. Behind him, he heard Dumah and Hannah bring up the rear of their formation.   
  
Every angel’s wings were different, a different color as well as subtle differences in shape. Their variety created an aerial signature that Castiel knew well enough to be able to identify every remaining angel by flight-sound alone. His own smoky-black wings were held almost vertically in the air from his back as he paused in a crouch, much like a flag his garrison could read. To his left and right, Gabriel’s golden wings and Balthazar’s shorter, flamboyantly orange-colored ones mimicked their leader’s position.   
  
Years back, Castiel had often wondered why Gabriel deferred to him to lead the Garrison. Gabriel outranked him, no matter how one looked at it. He was an Archangel, and fearsome in battle; Heaven’s sword of justice could not find a better hand. But Gabriel just couldn’t see himself a leader. Castiel knew better. Everyone loved Gabriel, and he would have happily stepped aside for his older brother. But instead, the whole of Camp Chitaqua looked to Castiel to lead them when it came to combat.   
  
It was a position Castiel now didn’t wish upon anyone. The guilt he felt every time they made a misstep was almost unbearable, the weight only increasing as the decades rolled on.   
  
He was determined that today would go smoothly. They hadn’t fought since they lost Samandriel to the other General further East. The signs they’d seen here indicated some low-level demon activity, scrapping among the locals, really, but it would give them all a chance to taste an easy win. Something Castiel knew they all much needed.   
  
Sliding his hand down the side of his beige trench coat, feeling the fitted armor beneath that covered him to his hip, Castiel rested his hand on top of his sword as he gathered his thoughts. His angel blade still hid between his feathers in the crook of his wing. These days he kept a weapon with a much longer reach to hand; a massive sword like Gabriel’s. It had only been a couple of years after the apocalypse when the remaining humans (and the myriad of other creatures that filled the ranks of the Generals’ armies) realized that the shining, three-sided angel blades could kill angels outright. They had kept them much more out of reach since then. Luckily, sometime before, Castiel’s friend Balthazar had stolen an entire cache of magical weapons from Heaven—Castiel remembered nothing of why—and had hidden them on Earth. Once, long ago, the weapons had protected the angels from each other; now they protected them from the Generals.   
  
Finally, the sound of one last pair of wings alighting onto the roof announced Gadreel.   
  
“The ground troops are in place,” he commented to Castiel, not even needing to look at them to position his dark-brown wings similarly. This was a familiar routine, even as their numbers diminished over the years.   
  
With a hum that could be felt but not heard, Castiel teased his grace up to the surface of his vessel, his eyes lighting with it as he unsheathed his sword. He turned his head to face the final angel that had joined them.   
  
Many of his angelic companions hadn’t trusted Gadreel at first, the infamy of being the one to let evil into the Garden of Eden not being a stigma that faded fast. He’d been cast out of Heaven by Lucifer just as the rest of them had, however, and eventually he had proven himself an excellent scout. Since then, he had been at Castiel’s side in many a battle. Despite some of the Garrison’s enduring mistrust, Castiel liked Gadreel. He believed in second chances and nowadays they only had a small family to rely on.   
  
Sometimes, fate leaves you to take whatever allies you can get.   
  
“How many demons, Gadreel? Smells like a lot,” Castiel said almost idly.   
  
“Seemed like at least fifty, though I see no reason why there would be so many,” Gadreel responded calmly, his dry voice lacking much emotion.   
  
“Anything of note?” Castiel asked as he observed Gabriel and Balthazar similarly unsheathe their weapons.   
  
“Infighting, like always. It's hard to tell which of the demons are aligned with the General here and which of them are fighting against him. The usual.”   
  
With a nod, Castiel shifted his wing position out just a few degrees. Immediately, his companions mimicked his intention with a soft feather rustle.   
  
“Stay in flight. I want you on the move the whole time—we’re all going home today. Cover our guys on the ground, smite any demon you come across. We’re not taking captives.”   
  
Smiling despite the heavy feeling in his chest, Castiel led the charge.   


 

 

  
  
  
Dropping down behind the barricade to give his trigger finger a moment's rest, Dean pulled down the green silk handkerchief that he still had tied about his face. He no longer needed it, out in the chill air of the street above. The smoke in the Pit below dispersed softly through the door behind the barricade, silhouetting the weapon-loaded demons at his side like Halloween party-goers.   
  
“There’s a lot of them,” Dean said, though there was no concern in his voice. He placed his tommy gun on the floor next to him and sheathed the colt at his hip, so that he could have both hands for the pump-action rifle.   
  
“Yeah.” Azazel growled next to him, a burst of gunfire coming from the rifle in his hands as he supported it firmly under his arm. He dropped down beside Dean suddenly, a bullet whizzing just a little too close to his face. “I swear these ones are better shots than the last lot, too. I don’t think they’re from around here, General.”  
  
Dean grunted his agreement. “I don’t think this lot are here because we killed their cousin or shot up their favorite bakery. They’re too well organized.”  
  
Licking at his lips, Dean looked over to Alistair, craning his head around Yellow-eyes as he sat between them, so he could catch the other demon’s attention.   
  
“How about I go get us one, Alistair? You and me can have a little fun tonight,” Dean offered with a sick grin.  
  
“Oooh, General.” The sing-song lisp that came from Alistair was rather too happy. “You know how much I love to see you in action.”  
  
Ignoring the double entendre, the General brought his gaze back to Azazel. “Cover me on the way out. I’m going to take the side streets, see who I meet.”  
  
Dean quickly shucked off his suit jacket, baring down to his white shirt for a little more ease of movement. He pushed up his shirt sleeves to his elbows, then reached towards the wooden crate Alastair had brought up from the Pit below. The little bottles, made of thin glass, had ties attached to the necks and Dean took a moment to secure a couple to his leather suspenders. Tapping a hand lightly on his chest, as if to double-check that the bullet-proof vest he always wore was tucked securely beneath his clothes, he turned back around.  
  
His black trilby hat still on his head, Dean peered up over the barricade. With precision, he fired off six rounds from the pump-action rifle, taking out the six people closest to him. They could have been his own men, he didn’t even know; he just wanted the space to run.   
  
Dropping the shotgun to the floor with a clatter once he was done, Dean smoothly reached back for his tommy gun as he swung his legs up and over the barricade, jumping out into the street.  
  
“Have fun, boss,” Azazel’s low growl followed Dean out onto the tarmac between the buildings.   
  
Running swiftly, the General kept his profile as low as he could, hoping to avoid recognition while out and exposed on the street.  
  
He made it around the corner without incident, ducking into an alleyway that ran up the side of an old department store, long closed down and with the windows boarded up. He ducked behind an abandoned dumpster, hoping the heavy green-painted metal would shield him for a moment while he assessed the crowd.  
  
Suddenly, without any kind of warning, the dumpster lid was crushed under a falling body.   
  
Tengu, Dean thought immediately, seeing the pale face and elongated nose of the man who had dented the metal. While tengu kept their bat-like wings hidden, the facial features were always a giveaway.  
  
The creature struggled to sit up, not noticing Dean crouched behind the dumpster. Understandably, his attention was caught by whatever, or whoever, had thrown him from the skies.  
  
Dean froze, trying to assess his options. Capturing the tengu wouldn’t have been his first choice; he needed someone to torture for information on this incursion, and tengu tended to have a poor grasp of English. About to roll out from behind the dumpster and put a holy bullet through the creature’s head, Dean hesitated. Another thump indicated that whatever had thrown the tengu had just landed.  
  
Pulling back, Dean instead peeked his black eyes out from his hiding spot.   
  
The man who now had the tengu’s throat in his hand looked unassuming, from behind. A large sword occupied his other hand. Dark, messy hair sat above a beige trench-coat, and that was about all the General could tell. As the tengu kicked back against his chest, the man flew back against the brick wall of the department store, showing Dean more of his face.  
  
He looked to be mid-thirties, the tousled dark hair looking even more messed up from the front, like the dude had rolled out of bed and into battle without looking in a mirror. His skin was lightly tanned, and there was maybe a day or two of stubble scattered across his cheeks. Beneath the trench coat, Dean noted, he was wearing some kind of tight, white armor that he was sure he’d seen before, but couldn’t place. It looked to be made of leather and was entirely covered in tiny sigils, shimmering a faint blue against the white.  The General was so entranced by the armor, he almost missed the tengu flying towards him.  
  
A crash, a twist, some unearthly growling—and suddenly Dean was face to face with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.  
  
_Holy fuck_.  
  
They blinked at each other in surprise. The tengu seized his moment, grabbing the shoulders of the man with a nasal screech and flying upwards. Dean couldn’t see the wings, but he was so close he heard them, the tengu beating them hard to jet upwards from a standing start.   
  
The vivid blue eyes that had been mere inches from Dean’s showed a shadow of surprise before they were jolted vertically upwards and out of sight.  
  
Dean rolled his shoulders, standing in the sudden silence. He could feel the fire building in his veins. He needed to kill something soon, inflict pain—the beast demanded it, his eyes growing darker as he stood alone in the alley.   
  
About to move on out of the alley to find a demon to nab quickly, Dean was halted again. The sound of flesh hitting flesh over and over drew his green eyes upwards.   
  
High above him, though growing closer by the minute, the man and the tengu wrestled. It was somehow amazing to watch, the steel-fists of the bat-winged beast flying as he deflected the man’s sword, which was being brought expertly around in arches towards the tengu’s weakest spots. The man’s other hand battered at his opponents face and body as they tumbled, every hit near-deadly even from his non-dominant hand.   
  
Neither seemed overly concerned that they were hurtling towards the ground.  
  
Dean, however, was concerned. If he didn’t move, they were going to land right on him.  
  
Jumping back against the wall, Dean’s hand went automatically towards his back, pulling around the tommy gun that had been strapped there since he paused in the alley.   
  
The armored man came out on top easily as they hit the ground. The tengu landed flat on his back on the concrete, pushed down into it by the man’s hand on his chest. The pavement crumbled around him. A deep, angry growl came from the man on top as he slid the punishing hand easily from the tengu’s chest to his face.   
  
Dean blinked, his mouth hanging open at what he saw in front of him.  
  
The man in the trench coat’s eyes flared white-blue, light of the same color bursting from his hand and revealing the tengu’s skull as if from within. The light burned out of the beast’s eye sockets, and he fell limp, the black circles where his eyes had been gently smoking.   
  
_No. Not light,_ Dean registered dully. _Grace_.  
  
Illuminated in the light, the man’s huge wing-shadows were outlined against the walls of the department store. Easily three times as wide as the man’s arm span, they ignited an odd dread in the bottom of the General’s stomach. Fear was an emotion that hadn’t touched him in his beast form for many, many years.   
  
The man looked up, his grace-lit eyes landing on Dean.  
  
_No. Not man_ , Dean amended. _Angel_.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Cas finally met... kind of!
> 
> I hope you're eager to see what happens next! Please let me know what you think of the chapter, fic-friends :)
> 
> \- Mal <3


	5. Angels Have Fallen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Welcome back for chapter five! I’m sure you’re all eager to see what happens now that Dean and Cas have crashed into each other (quite literally) in this ‘verse. Well, I’ll tell you… but we do have a couple of other characters to catch up on in this chapter, too.
> 
> As with the other chapters, the title comes from a classic rock song that relates to the chapter. This one is ‘Angels Have Fallen’ by Kansas. I think this one is an obvious reference from the first line of the song, _“Angels have fallen, fallen from heaven, where did they go?”_ , but there’s actually a lot of this ‘verse’s Dean and Cas in this song for me too, specifically the middle part. _“Save me for now, save me forever, Hold me so close, I can't bear to go. There's darkness around me or is it within me? You're living forever, I'm dying so slow.”_
> 
> There’s another fantastic art piece by the amazing [Migglangelus](http://migglangelus.tumblr.com/) in this chapter! You can find them [here.](http://migglangelus.tumblr.com/)
> 
> This fic wouldn't be here without [jscribbles.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jscribbles/pseuds/jscribbles) Your time, enthusiasm, and laughter when I do dumb shit is what keeps me writing some days ;) Thanks also to [Cassie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erudite12) for this chapter :)
> 
> Anyway! As always, my triggers may not be your triggers, so if there’s anything you think needs to be tagged, please let me know; I never mind. 
> 
> How are you feeling about these characters so far? Which of our dastardly duo do you like the best: Sam or Dean? And what do you think of Crowley and Chuck? Let me know! :)
> 
> Mal <3

 

 

Father Milton swept the floor of his small chapel nightly. It wasn’t like anyone ever attended services anymore. Religious leanings were at an all-time low in the last couple of hundred years, but the dust from the apocalyptic wasteland that made up most of North-America had a habit of blowing through the door.

He was about to begin his nightly sweeping ritual when he noticed the candles. He kept a supply of prayer candles next to the small altar west of the pews, just in case someone stopped by. They also proved very useful during the frequent power outages Detroit suffered from.

The altar was lit up, every candle that he’d left there flickering, buried in the sand provided. He had never seen the space so bright in all his years tending Main Street Church. Once, it had been called Grace and Peace Ministry of New Hope and Glory, but that had honestly seemed tacky once Lucifer strolled past the door three hundred years back. Now, Main Street Church was one of the only religious buildings left in the whole State.

Benjamin Milton came from a long line of religious folk. His grandmother used to tell tales that their family had been vessels, able to hold angels. He didn’t know how true that was, but he’d always felt called to the Church. He’d never felt uneasy in his Church before, in any church, even. But now, something felt different. The air was almost charged with something unnatural as he propped his broom up against the wall, stepping out into the main room to walk towards the candles.

A man sat alone in the pews, closest to the altar. He was dressed in worn khakis and boots, topped off with a stretched red hoodie over a plain white t-shirt. He had a mid-length brown beard scattered with grey, and wild brown hair. He didn’t look up as the priest approached, though Father Milton was already certain he’d never seen him before.

“Good evening,” Father Milton offered softly. “Can I help you?”

The man looked up, his blue eyes searching the priest’s face for just a moment longer than was comfortable, as if taking much more than a full measure of the man.

“You’re a believer,” came the man’s odd response.

“Of course,” Father Milton responded, smiling. “There are still some of us around. I’m Father Benjamin Milton, this is my church. Welcome.”

The priest noted then that the quiet man’s lap contained an array of feathers. Somehow uneasy, he lowered himself down to the pew next to his visitor. The quiet was heavy and sad.

“I’m sorry about your candles,” the man spoke up after a moment. “I used them all up. I had a lot to pray about, a lot of people to remember.”

Father Milton couldn’t help but smile. “It’s lovely to see them used. Did you have enough?”

“There couldn’t ever be enough,” the man’s voice was so full of sorrow it caught the priest off-guard.

“Nothing is eternal, except for God,” the priest comforted. “Even the worst sorrows come to an end.”

“I’m well aware,” the man finally turned his head towards Father Milton, nodding at him quickly. “My name is Chuck Shurley. I apologize, I’m not trying to be rude. I just…”

His voice trailed off and his eyes dropped to his lap, to the puddle of different colored feathers that sat there so casually. He picked one up and drew the fingers of his other hand against the vane.

“This was Uriel. He was such a stick-in-the-mud,” Chuck smiled briefly. “He was misled. Loyal, but misled.”

Unsure what to say, Father Milton stayed quiet, just watching the small man sift through his pile of feathers, stroking them one by one, almost fondly. His voice was so heavy, the priest’s heart ached.

“Anna. She didn’t go about things the right way, she disobeyed, but her heart was so pure. She saw some of the things I’d once hoped all my children would see. Bartholomew, he wanted order. He overreached, as so many of them did. Malachai, well, he’d been an anarchist since the moment I put him together. Michael—” Chucks voice caught and he choked for a moment, crushing a gleaming white feather in his fist. “He was my first son. I had such high hopes, but don’t all parents? We expect too much, we take it too personally when we’re let down.”

Father Milton nodded vaguely, totally confused.

“I didn’t let any of them down the way I did Castiel, though. Not even Lucifer. Lucifer made his own bed, caused his own problems. Castiel made so many mistakes, but he was the only one who really ever tried to fix them. My betrayal of him was the worst. I never helped him when I should, and now I….”

Chuck seemed done talking then. His eyes moved over to Father Milton, blinking as if he’d forgotten he was there.

“Thank you for listening, Father,” Chuck murmured gratefully. Two fingers raised to the priest's temple and a brief humming sound rose, filling the room for the quickest of instances.

Father Milton grabbed his broom from the wall, moving on to sweep his empty Church.

No one ever came here to pray, but he didn’t question why the candles burned.

 

 

It was far enough past midnight that most would call it morning, but the party was still in full swing in the backrooms of The Madhouse. Music thumped through the air, softening the spinning sounds of roulette wheels and the crashing of fists on tables when the cards weren’t in favor. Sam Winchester watched it all from his chair in the corner, his eyes half-lidded and disinterested. The demon Ruby, resplendent in a deeply slit black gown that brushed the floor, inched closer to his side and leaned in to whisper.

“Did you want to retire, General? It looks like he isn’t going to make it tonight - surprise surprise.”

“No,” Sam responded without looking at her. He shifted forward so that his elbows were on the table, his hazel eyes resting solidly on the door that led into the room from the restaurant-like area at the front. “He’ll be here. Crowley is too much of a coward to break a date with me.”

Ruby pouted slightly but didn’t respond, slithering instead out of her seat beside the General and moving off into the crowd. She circled the room, passing easy smiles to the demons and beasts she recognized, fluttering socially about while Sam was left to his musing. It was always this way for them; Ruby was Sam’s face when he didn’t have the patience for people, just as much as she was his silken voice of encouragement in his most barbaric moments.

Most in the room considered her Sam’s partner, but that was wrong. Sam used Ruby as much as anyone, only echoes in the dark space where his heart should be. She was a body; he was no more loyal to her than to Crowley. In fact, he’d probably even have slept with Crowley if he was bored enough. Ruby, though, knew his innermost workings and those of many others. He kept her close to provide the things he wanted in abundant supply; sex, demon blood, and secrets.

The hours ticked on, almost to dawn before Sam sensed Crowley nearby. The General didn’t even need the tracking spell he’d long ago placed on Crowley. His magically enhanced senses could pick up the stench of the ex-King of Hell at three hundred feet, his musk of sulfur, bitterness, and fear barely smothered by cheap cologne. Rising as he sensed the demon nearby, Sam nodded his departure to Ruby and slipped out of the door to meet him.

Crowley may not have been ‘a car person’, as he said, but with his powers so diminished by being away from his seat in Hell, he could no longer teleport. Transportation had to be found, and most of the modern, electric cars that had been on Earth back when the apocalypse occurred were fried by sheets of ground lightning and electrical storms when Lucifer rose. For years they’d sat, clogging up the roadways, until they were eventually pushed aside or torn apart by the horrendous winds and tornadoes that ripped through the deserts between the cities.

Older cars, with less electrical parts and more careful craftsmanship, fared much better. While Crowley was hardly a man to be enamored with his black 1926 Bentley, he was very appreciative that it worked.

Sam’s white suit reflected Crowley’s headlights, illuminating him like a ghost in the dark as Crowley slowly pulled the Bentley up to the edge of the sidewalk in front of The Madhouse. Rolling down the window, he tilted his head at the General, nodding to the passenger seat.

“Your place or mine, General?” Crowley’s grin was jovial, a greeting, but his tone was flat.

Sam snorted. “Move over, Crowley. As if I’d let you drive me anywhere.”

Pushed into the passenger seat of his own vehicle, Crowley tried to calm his tingling nerves as the General tore the vehicle away from the pavement at full speed. He looked around at the interior of the slightly tattered, sandy car with apparent distaste.

“Doesn’t go as fast as mine,” Sam called over the roaring engine.

“It sat in a junkyard for near two hundred years,” Crowley mused. “I’m shocked it moves at all.”

They rode in silence. It would have seemed to almost anyone that the car rumbled erratically through the streets, but Crowley was certain that Sam knew exactly where he was going. Who the General was trying to shake he wasn’t so sure.

After about fifteen minutes, the Bentley spun sharply south and started heading out of the city. Sam’s casual demeanor left him then. He hunched forward slightly over the wheel, eating up the miles with a deliberate intensity that was starting to freak Crowley out more than usual. Paralyzed in his seat, he kept his eyes firmly on the road as Sam headed way out of Detroit.

Another ten minutes or so, and Sam seemed to remember he was there.

“Aren’t you going to ask where I’m taking you, Crowley?”

“Nope,” Crowley answered firmly. “Honestly I’d rather not know.”

“Were you this much of a coward before?” Sam asked with an odd curiosity, his too-probing hazel eyes slipping sideways toward the demon.

“Actually,” Crowley considered for a moment, “no, I don’t think I was. But then, you were less terrifying. Perhaps I’m just sensible.”

A full-bodied chuckle tumbled out of Sam, rolling across the dashboard and breaking the monotonous sound of the engine for a moment. “Maybe that’s true. You do keep surviving, after all. Like a cockroach or a rat.”

“Was a rat once, for a couple of days,” Crowley offered with a small smile. “Life’s been worse.”

The black Bentley shuddered as the General cut the gas, having whipped into the parking lot of an abandoned brick factory. There seemed to be little in Detroit, outside of Main Street and 3rd, that wasn’t abandoned. Lights off, the classic car was barely detectable in the heavy pre-dawn.

“Are we going to shoot the shit much longer?” Sam’s precise intonation became a low drawl as he pocketed Crowley’s keys, his hand on the door handle as a secondary question.

Crowley opted for scurrying out of the car and around to the driver's door, rather than responding.

Sam took a moment to brush down his white suit jacket, flicking idly at the sandy dust that settled along the pocket-lines before he left the car. Not particularly looking at Crowley, he strolled towards the building.

For a few seconds Crowley just stared after him, before forcing his feet to gallop and follow the much taller man’s long strides.

In the center of the ground floor of the building, there was a locked office. Sam stopped outside the door, pulling a simple silver key on a chain from his pocket. He turned to take in the demon fully, for the first time that night.

“Last chance station, Crowley.”

“All-aboard,” Crowley sighed, all regret but no hesitation.

Within the office, behind the desk, was a trapdoor. The thick dust was dislodged around it, owing to recent use. Easing it ajar, Sam lay the hinged door down on the floor, so that it was fully open. Moving behind Crowley, he let the demon take a curious look down into the hole.

With his usual grace and elegance, Sam kicked Crowley in first.

The protracted darkness in the windowless area was a jolt more than the shoulder Crowley landed on. The air was stale, a little thick. With a much more dignified drop, the General landed beside Crowley. The air crackled with magic, something Crowley could still sense even without his own, and flames danced into existence around Sam’s balled fist. It was a simple enough magic in this minor form, but Crowley knew that the fire that burned out of the General’s skin could destroy enemies just as easily as it was lighting the passageway they had landed in.

 

 

 

 

 

“Maintenance tunnel, so the brick workers could get under the machinery,” Sam offered as if Crowley was remotely interested.

Dusting off his knees as he staggered himself to his feet, Crowley merely made a hum of agreement as he shifted closer to the light, falling into line beside the General.

They walked for perhaps fifty feet before the tunnel opened up into a large room of arched brick. Every hair Crowley possessed stood on end, his mind and body screaming wrong, wrong, wrong, in unison.

He didn’t want to think about what was in this room.

“You have what I need for the angel?” Sam asked suddenly, sharply.

With a trembling hand, Crowley took to his pocket and offered out the smoky-black feather he’d been entrusted with. “It belongs to Castiel. There’s not many left to choose from, but he should serve the purpose - while also hurting the Garrison, which we all stand to gain from.”

Sam barely looked at the feather, merely tucking it into his interior suit pocket.

“Good. Let’s begin—take off your coat.”

Crowley struggled not to vomit as he obeyed.

 

 

 

Dean was briefly afraid, but he wasn’t in any way hindered by it. However, he wasn’t stupid either.

He immediately stepped back from the beautiful man in the trench coat, reaffirming his grip on his tommy gun and letting fly a rain of bullets as the angel began to straighten up from his crouch. The grace-shine that had illuminated the whole alleyway dulled, bringing vivid blue eyes back into view.

Dean kept backing up, step by step.

The angel staggered as the bullets hit him, hissing in anger and pain but nonetheless moving forward.

His stride was much longer than a walk, both feet off the ground for a length of time that made clear he was using his wings, even though they weren’t in view. With his sword out to his side, the strange wing-aided run, like a high-speed long-jump, brought to mind the epic leaps of heroes from comic books of old. Dean had a brief memory that maybe before, maybe as a small boy, he’d once read such things.

With no time to dwell on it, Dean raised his gun in defense. He pushed it forward to bash it against the chest of the incoming angel, who clearly intended to punch him into the ground. A solid thunking sound announced the gun’s rebuttal by the flat of the gleaming sword. The Angel had seen it coming. As he grabbed ahold of Dean’s weapon with his empty hand, they grappled briefly with the sword and gun between them.

Dean could feel the trembling in his bones increase, his eyes growing blacker with rage until he was indistinguishable at a glance from one of his demon foot-soldiers. Dean’s strength grew, briefly giving his heavenly attacker a run for his money.

The angel’s head tilted to the side in puzzlement, regarding Dean’s black eyes and human face with a depth that seemed out of place given their frantic wrestling.

Whatever he was looking for in Dean’s face, he either did not find, or he found, but really did not like.

With a snarl, the angel threw Dean back against the brick wall of the alleyway, his breath puffing heavily into his face. Their strength matched, they held for a moment before Dean planted his foot into the angel’s solar plexus, forcing space between them as he staggered back. The tommy gun fell to the floor with a clatter, but Dean ignored it, knowing it was of no real use to him against this creature.

Ducking punches and wild sword swings, the two weaved and danced around each other, their deadly choreography moved to soundtrack of growls and grunts. Far beyond speech, Dean needed the angel’s neck between his hands to calm his Beast fever, but the creature was clearly highly trained; he fought better than any opponent Dean could recall. Dean feinted back, drawing him in bit by bit, knowing he had only one weapon that could truly help.

His moment came as the angel dived at him again. Dean stuck his neck out, and the angel grabbed it, intending to slam him down into the tarmac as he had done with the tengu minutes before.

Flying down backward heavily, Dean slid his hand almost imperceptibly down his side to where his suspenders joined his waist.

“Who are you?” the angel growled fiercely. The vibration of his deep voice pressed into Dean's chest as he crouched closely over him.

Dean wrapped his fingers around one of the small bottles Alastair had brought up from The Pit.

When he didn’t answer, the angel grew more enraged. “Which one are you? It has to be you, even—”

The angel never finished. Dean shook the bottle swiftly and swung his hand up to the side, smashing the holy-fire grenade against the angel’s back.

With an ear-splitting scream of agony, the angel’s wings went up in flames.

Dean had the satisfaction of watching the panic spread across the creature’s face for the smallest of moments before the two usually invisible appendages, now swiftly being sheathed in flame, beat once and soared him up and off of Dean’s chest.

He watched in a strange kind of awe as the angel sped across the sky away from him. Its wingspan must have been at least thirty feet across, outlined against the early evening clouds like a burning, shooting-star. Dean observed him careen in the direction of Chicago River, dropping like a fiery meteor out of view behind the city.

Dean stayed where he was for a moment, sprawled on his back at the end of the alleyway. His irises slowly shifted back from black to gray, filtering down through smoky hues until a very-human green came into view. As the power faded, he began to feel the pain of the fight, biting back a rough growl. He felt the damage to his broken shoulder blades, caused by the angel slamming him down into the ground. He could barely move his arms as the magic ebbed from him, but he managed to roll to his side with a grunt, hooking one finger through the strap of his tommy gun and dragging it back close to him.

He knew of only a handful of people who had fought with an Angel one-on-one and come out alive. Perhaps three or four people in existence, including his brother and himself. It wasn’t an experience Dean hoped to repeat often. The sooner they could wipe out the winged bastards, the better.

Dean found himself grateful that the road back to The Pit was lined with corpses. Enough people had been slain that the fighting was dying down, easing his path back to his comrades. He needed to get back to his office to heal. He couldn’t run into his enemies like this, vulnerable and weak-looking.

The pain was terrible, but looking weak was worse. Appearing weak could be his downfall.

Keeping his back to the walls of the abandoned shop-fronts he passed, Dean saw minimal movement now along 2nd Street. In the distance, he saw that the barricade in front of The Pit had been pulled across to the door; he assumed Azazel had made the decision to retreat back inside as the fighting died down.

Cautious nonetheless, Dean stepped determinedly back towards the club, trying to disguise his agony.

A movement tugged at the corner of his eye. A smaller person ducked into a car on the opposite side of the street up ahead. The vehicle pulled out swiftly, speeding away from the scene of bloody battle as if its very presence would have been incriminating.

Dean frowned. He’d have sworn that the driver looked like Meg.

 _Why would Meg still be here?_ he mused, trying to control his groaning as he eased himself over the barrier.

A strangled yell came from the floor as he pressed down onto the barrier, and Dean realized with some amusement that one of the bodies trapped beneath the edge of it was still alive.

“Well, hello there,” he greeted the demon whose leg he was inadvertently crushing, “You’re not one of mine.”

Dean was aware that his gums were bleeding from his impact with the alleyway wall. As he grinned down at the furious, blacked-eyed creature, blood dripped down his chin and onto his white shirt.

The bastard dared to growl up at him, mostly immobile—pinned by a trap bullet, it appeared, his shoulder unable to leave the ground.

“Perfect,” Dean cooed through his own pain. “You’ll do just fine.”

Leaving the creature without another glance, Dean stepped on down the iron steps that led into the main bar of The Pit.

His yellow-eyed lieutenant waited for him in the bar area, holding some thread between his teeth as he casually sewed up a gash in his own arm. His feet were kicked up on a chair, but he immediately straightened at Dean’s arrival.

“General! Done playing?” Azazel grinned.

“Something like that,” Dean responded tightly, ditching the tommy gun into the floor so he could relieve the pressure on his arms. “I’m heading down to my office. Send Bela down to me immediately.”

He moved as confidently as he could through the room, feeling plenty of eyes on him.

“Alastair!” Dean called out as he moved toward the elevator.

The demon’s head popped up from behind the bar counter, where he’d been liberating a couple of unsmashed bottles of Dean’s whiskey.

“Yes, General?” the skinny, gray-haired man purred unevenly.

“There’s a demon upstairs pinned under the barrier. Just what we need. Go grab him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no, Castiel's WINGS! (Or at least that's what I hope you're all crying, as I sure am!)
> 
> What did you think of the chapter, fic-friends? Let me know!
> 
> \- Mal <3


	6. Paranoid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there, readers! 
> 
> First of all, I'm delighted to be able to share the amazingly beautiful banner, made by the amazing miggles. You can see it at the beginning of chapter one, if you'd like a peek ;)
> 
> The song title for this weeks chapter is, of course, Black Sabbath's "Paranoid"... and hopefully by the time you've caught up with Dean, Castiel, and their associates, you'll see why!
> 
> Let me know what you think of the chapter! This one IS a bit darker, so please do take heed of the tags for violence and torture, and let me know if there's anything you think needs an extra, or specific tag.
> 
> \- Mal <3

  
  


“Look, mom! A star!”

Pete was six, and he’d never seen a shooting star before.

“That’s not a star, baby, it’s heading downward. I think it’s a comet… or some kind of fiery meteor thing?”

The woman sounded uncertain, Castiel noted.  _ And so you should,  _ he mentally berated her.  _ I’m an Angel of the Lord, not a flammable falling rock. _

The young boy and his mother seemed to be the only people around, everyone on that side of Chicago still quaking within their homes from the pitched battle that had just ended. They appeared to be scavenging through the empty streets. Castiel didn’t have time to dwell on the circumstances that most likely led them to doing so; he was losing wingbeats and descending at a startling pace.

As the water of the Chicago river rushed up to meet him, Castiel was briefly met with his own reflection on its surface; thirty feet of flaming wings hurtling downward.

_ Well, maybe I can see the comet resemblance, this time. _

The refreshingly cold water enveloped Castiel and sucked him down, sizzling around every feather as he sank himself deep. It was disgustingly dirty, but he cared very little as it soothed his burning wings. The flames died as Castiel dived down and propelled himself deeper under the ripples, hoping to remain out of sight in the dark water.

Hauling himself out of the opposite side of the river, he scrambled awkwardly up onto the concrete path that ran alongside the water.

Dripping and furious, he took a quick look around. Grounded as he was then, he was vulnerable and exposed. Just the thought of being brought so low pissed him off; Castiel was short tempered at the best of times, but this was a new level of insulting. Fleeing from a fight, grounded, outmaneuvered by… whatever that was. He bristled, not just with discomfort but from the indignity of it. His wings would heal, the flames hadn’t burned long enough to damage the roots—but the disrespect would sting for quite a while.

Castiel had a good idea  _ who _ it was that had burned him, but anything further than that, he was uncertain. When the Generals had outlived their normal human lifespan, the Garrison had assumed that they had been turned into demons by Lucifer. Whatever that thing was back there, it wasn’t a demon… but it hadn’t seemed quite human either.

Shaking the thoughts from his head, Castiel hissed as he folded his burnt wings in as small as he could make them, and began moving.

He had to get out of the city, find somewhere to lay low until his wings began to heal. He couldn’t fly any further with his them so stiff and sore, so he ran.

As an angel, his stamina was almost infinite. But with his pained wings and the uncomfortable feeling that was someone was tailing him, Castiel decided to duck into one of the many empty stores that filled the streets. It would mean the garrison would likely miss him if they were searching overhead, but there was nothing to be done. He could fly back to camp later, when the agony eased.

Even inside the building, he couldn’t shake the sense that someone was watching him, that he was somehow being followed. Though he saw no one to indicate that was true, he still felt compelled to hunker down in the back of the shop, once a bookstore, and wait. He could rest here until the encroaching night was deep. Then he would head to the outskirts of the city and try to obtain a vehicle or some way of contacting the camp.

Before _ ,  _ Castiel sourly recalled, he would have been able to call his brothers and sisters for assistance in seconds. Telepathy between Angels was as natural as flying, but when Lucifer had cast them all from Heaven, the channels had gone silent. Diminished in power the longer they spent away from Heaven, the Host had neither the knowledge nor the capability to fix it. After a couple of hundred years, Castiel was finally used to the quiet, but he realized too late that carrying a phone like the humans did may not have been such a bad idea.

For now, he sat down on a dusty, rotting couch that had been positioned so that patrons, many years ago, could sit facing the window and read. With an agonized shudder, he eased his wings around in front of himself to assess the damage.

His initial thoughts looked to be right. The feather roots hadn’t burned, and given a little time they should grow back. For now, his wings were an ugly assortment of crispy vanes and stiff, blackened feather shafts that stuck out at odd angles. They were a mess, and incredibly sore. Slumping back against the couch, he let his grace pool gently through them, soothing the blistered feeling and easing up the ache.

His eyes scanned over the remains of the bookshelves around him. Not much was left, pillaged or destroyed by the years. Reaching across to the nearest shelf, he pulled down some Vonnegut to keep him company until night fell.

 

_ “One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.” _

_ ― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five _

 

The General’s arms trembled at his sides as he slid into the chair behind his desk, gritting his teeth and spinning almost childishly in it to distract himself while he waited for Bela. Dean was familiar with a huge assortment of different injuries, but this particular problem felt painfully new. When the angel had slammed him down into the concrete, Dean had heard his shoulder blades shatter sickeningly. At the time, fueled by Lucifer’s magic, he’d registered it dully but ignored it in favor of the fight. As he came down from his smoky high, he realized that he could barely move his arms. Agonizing waves of pain radiated down through them and across his back when he did so much as breathe. Stars before his eyes, he concentrated on the slow spinning of the chair, closing his lids against the dim light of his office.

Bela Talbot was an attractive brunette demon who, if Dean recalled correctly, had been dragged to Hell as part of a crossroads deal. Three hundred years and one demonic upgrade later, she was one of Dean’s most trusted associates—if it could be said that he ‘trusted’ anyone. She was always eager to please the General, and could find something to her own benefit in almost every situation. She held the dubious position of managing the many slave humans, beasts, and demons that Dean and his fellows had collected over the years, using them for labor, for blood, for sex, and for currency.

She moved noisily into Dean’s private quarters, the tips of her five-inch heels tapping through the basement and echoing around the windowless space. A black dress, tight enough to be provocative but elegant enough to be classy, clung to the very edges of her shoulders and slunk its way softly down to her knees.

“Sir?” Bela inquired respectfully, her crisp British accent falling from between perfect red lipstick as she came to a halt at the door. “Azazel said you requested my presence. I told him it wasn’t that surprising, given your other options for company… I had to swipe two of your oldest whiskeys away from Alastair, you know.”

Dean grunted and opened his eyes, turning to her. Normally, with the rush of adrenaline from causing another pain, or the high from more carnal acts, the demonic-like smokiness of Dean’s eyes would fade. After the fight with the angel, his senses were on edge from frustration and the pain of his shattered bones. The gaze that greeted Bela was almost black.

“Potion,” the General growled, struggling against the pain and his Beast in equal parts.

They had called it his Beast for as long as Dean recalled having it. It gave many people lower down on the food chain the wrong impression; they thought him a demon, or a werewolf, someone with some _ thing _ inside. They were wrong though. Dean had been just as human as Bela had once been before she made the wrong deal. In a fashion, Dean had also made the wrong deal—but his had been made for him. Or at least, he thought so. Memory was hazy, from magic and time.

His Beast, the overriding rush of bloodlust and need and fury that came upon him, accompanied by extra strength and extra speed, came straight from Lucifer, the Light Bringer, the fallen archangel himself. The magic that wrapped around his soul, gray and wisp-like, was hungry to erupt at the slightest trigger. Like a permanent attack-dog, he had little semblance of control when the magic tightened in his chest.

Coincidentally, cruelly, the same vile potion that Lucifer had once forced him to consume now sustained his life, verging him on immortality. It did more than that, though; it gave his dark powers a sickening boost when consumed, but would also heal him, lighting him from within like an angel.

Without question, Bela moved further into the room and shut the office door behind her. The basement was empty for now, but they both knew that the returning soldiers and ass-kissers might stroll down at any moment.

“Key?” Her question was soft but crisp, to the point.

Dean nodded slowly towards the small pocket in his blood-red vest. Understanding, but cautious, Bela stepped around the desk with a sharp  _ click-clack _ of her heels. She slipped her slender fingers across the sigil-like embroidery, down into the chest pocket of the dapper garment, teasing out a tiny silver key.

“Hyde potion, shaken not stirred, coming right up,” she said, a wink sassed in his direction as she moved to the cabinet under the desk. She crouched in front of it and unlocked it swiftly, pulling out a heavily engraved wooden box. The small container, a tiny chest really, was inlaid with an array of spellwork that diverted the eyes of anyone who didn’t already know what it contained.

Leaving Dean spinning slowly in his chair, Bela moved to prop the box against the edge of his brass bar cart. She reached for one of the cut crystal glasses that sat waiting, turning it over and placing it down in front of her, ready to receive the ingredients to the potion she was making.

A few pinches of ground herbs, a couple of drops from a bottle of an oily substance—after those, only two of the ingredients were of any importance. The rest were just tiny protections to tailor the effects and make the vile concoction acceptable to a human form. The first, Bela swiftly supplied with a small knife that lay on the bar tray. It was sharp enough to draw a gush of blood from her wrist, half filling the glass before her demonic healing kicked in.

The final ingredient, the grace of an angel, she removed from a tiny vial within the box. The grace was gas-like in the way it floated, but oddly heavy in the way it sunk and mingled itself into the demon blood, with no angel around to be attracted to. A small stir with the blade of the knife, and the simple concoction was ready.

“General,” Bela said quietly. Her eyes rested cautiously on Dean, placing the glass on the desk in front of him.

Opening his eyes again, he reached out painfully slowly.

Bela sighed, picking the glass back up. She hesitated before bringing it to his lips, an underlying fear beginning to show in her actions. As the first few drops touched Dean’s tongue, the smokiness of his eyes increased. His brow creased down in a deep, hungry snarl as he grabbed up at Bela’s wrist, tipping the rest of the glass zealously down into his mouth.

Dean could  _ feel _ his eyes darken further, like a sudden rush of heat to his face. His shoulder blades crunched uncomfortably as the bones shifted quickly back together, clicking and grating. Small cuts across his face and arms from the tussle in the alleyway seemed to melt away into his skin, and he took on a momentary glow that might remind some people, those who knew of it, of the light of an Angel bringing his grace to the surface.

He didn’t let go of Bela, only gripped tighter. With a gasp of discomfort as she twisted her wrist in Dean’s restraining hand, the glass dropped, empty, to the floor.

The tiny shards of crystal danced around his dress shoes as the tumbler smashed at his feet. The very last traces of the accurately named Hyde-potion splattering onto the floor were the last sights Dean recalled before his vision went entirely black.

 

The Garrison assembled atop the roof of the department store once more. Below them, in the dusty city streets, the fighting was all but done.

Gadreel’s brown feathers  _ shushed _ softly as he landed beside Gabriel, sheathing his weapons solemnly. Castiel was yet to arrive, but as Gabriel and Balthazar looked at him expectantly, he went ahead and updated them with the details of his fly-over.

“The humans are moving out, relatively casualty-free,” Gadreel swiftly updated them all. “The different factions seemed to be too focused on each other to notice that they were being picked off from an extra side. It worked very well.”

A strange kind of smile pulled at Gabriel’s small mouth—it might have been pride. “The Commander’s plans always do,” he said.

Gadreel agreed with a firm nod. “Indeed. Castiel is a superior strategist.”

“Speaking of our fearless leader,” Balthazar chimed in, slipping a thin, rapier-like sword into the sheath that hung at his hip, “I thought he was with you, Gabriel?”

Pushing his dark-blond waves back from his face, Gabriel squinted out across the rooftops of the city. “We had a group of tengu come at us. Nasty, bat-winged bastards. We cut through the first couple really quickly, but the third one was actually a moderately decent fighter. Castiel took him off to the side while I pulled the General’s vampire guys back from the human line…”

Trailing off, Gabriel walked the few steps to the edge of the building, leaning forward to peer over the waist-high brick wall that ran around the edge.

“Well, there’s the creature,” he muttered, frowning at the body of a grace-blasted humanoid that was splayed out way down on the floor of the alley beside them. “But no Castiel.”

Gadreel’s tall, broad frame joined Gabriel at the wall, observing the tengu. “That was clearly Castiel. Look how he died.”

“Flat on his back, slammed down, eye’s burnt?” Balthazar wasn’t even looking. “Such a predictably cocky little shit, our Cassie.”

Gabriel was the kind to giggle or grin at almost any comment or joke, but he only managed a thin smile at Balthazar’s not-inaccurate observation. “I thought he’d be back by now. He always follows protocol.”

“He made the protocol,” Gadreel added in agreement. “He should have checked in and updated you immediately after separation.”

Silence fell, and the trio moved back to where Dumah and Hannah were pouring over a map of Chicago that they had spread out on the thick ledge the boundary wall created. They added a series of marks, murmuring quietly as they updated the Garrison’s intel of the city.

“Hannah,” Gadreel interrupted calmly. “I’m sorry to interrupt, sister, but Castiel hasn’t reported back to us.”

Her slim face fell into a frown. As one of those who was rarely comfortable around Gadreel, she turned her response to Gabriel. “We should follow protocol.”

Gabriel nodded, though his eyes were a little distant. Of course, they’d follow what they’d been told; that was what angels always did.  _ They’re little more than holy sheep _ , Gabriel thought bitterly. They had been formed just to follow God’s orders, but Gabriel himself had never been very good at that.  _ The only ones worse at toeing the line than me were Lucifer and Castiel. So I guess I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance on how this could go with those role-models,  _ he mused.

The angels separated into two teams and flew a well-practiced search pattern through the Chicago skies. They had many advantages over a human when it came to seeking out one of their brothers. Their eyes were sharper, able to spot a familiar face from way up in the clouds. They could smell better than any tracking dog and could hear exceptionally well. They listened not just for Castiel’s voice, but for the signature of his wings in the air, beating out a tune that was as unique to him as their own was to them.

They flew back and forth, over and over, slow and careful. They found nothing.

Reconvening back atop the department store after the prescribed amount of time, the small group of angels traded uncomfortable looks.

“Perhaps one more pass—” Balthazar began to suggest.

“That isn’t the protocol, Balthazar,” came Dumah’s clipped tone.

Balthazar exchanged a worried glance with Gabriel, but they both nodded. Castiel, after all, was the one to create and enforce the rules of the garrison in the first place. They couldn’t break them just because it was him.

It was a solemn formation that fell in behind Gabriel, deferring to his reluctant leadership.

Soaring up above the streets, well below the clouds but out of range of a gun or dart, the angels followed the train of vintage army trucks that had come from Camp Chitaqua. They were wary, keeping an eye on their human charges, the soldiers that made up the little resistance that was left.

They flew slower than usual, exchanging looks, wrapped in weighty silence.  The human’s noticed nothing, focused on their own problems, barely noting that the Garrison returned home with one less member than they came.

 

Dean came back around slowly, waking from his black-out feeling sated but with blood across his knuckles and his shirt undone. He tucked the loose fabric back into his dress pants and cleaned himself up quickly, before he rang the bell near the door. He stepped over Bela’s prone, bloodied form to head up to the bar, knowing that the slaves responding to the bell would find her.

_ She’s a demon, _ he thought dispassionately. _ She’ll be fine. _

Alastair had the demon prepared for questioning by the time Dean stepped out of the shaky elevator, straightening his tie and cockily flipping his plain black trilby hat up onto his head. A woman recoiled from him as he stepped onto the hardwood bar floor, his steel-tipped shoes announcing his presence. He grinned wolfishly at her, delighted by the reaction.

Dean moved through the assembled bar patrons, taking his time to nod and smile wherever it felt necessary. They seemed subdued both from the attack and from their fear of his presence. He had been at The Pit more often in recent years, more often than many of them would care for, quietly terrorizing his armies and associates with his mere presence. He approached Alastair with a cruel smile, always eager for information on his enemies.

“I am loyal to the General,” the demon said flatly.

Alastair and Dean exchanged a look. Picking up a thin knife from the array on the table next to him, Alastair passed it over to Dean with a predatory smile.

“Loyalty is an outmoded concept,” Alastair's strange, shaky drawl drew out.

They were in the main room of The Pit’s bar area. Many leaders would have kept their tortures private or hidden them from prying eyes, but Dean cared little who saw. He made a spectacle of it—he also maintained that the bar floors were easier to clean. The demon that Alastair had dragged from the street, under Deans instruction, shook under the eyes of thirty or so frightened spectators. The body he occupied was young, an overly-muscled specimen with a shock of red hair and a dusting of freckles.

Dean trailed his knife lazily across the demon’s cheek, connecting two of the faint speckles on his skin. The General’s eyes had a hint of gray around their whites; enough for him to do what he needed, but the Beast mostly sated, for now.

“What’s your name, handsome?” Dean breathed thickly into the demon’s space, his voice a low threat.

“Ivan,” the demon said uncertainly, thrown.

Alastair leaned back against a table. Most of the room had been cleared, chairs pushed to the side, a devils trap painted in the center of the floor under the chair the demon was tied to. Dean flitted about in it easily; Alastair hovered carefully on the outside. He watched Dean with a vile, hungry intensity as he began his work with their captive.

“Well, Ivan,” Dean purred. “Tell me why this attack was so coordinated, why it happened now, and what it means. Tell me your secrets, Ivan, because I am not buying that you are loyal to me.”

The demon gulped nervously, pulling uselessly at his ties; even if he ripped out of the rope, there was a stake through each of his feet that had a devils trap carved onto the pointed tip. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m loyal,” he protested, green eyes coming up to the General. “Please, I’m just a drug-runner. I got caught up in this. I’ve got a girl, waiting. Please—”

“Nuh-uh-uh.” Dean silenced the demon by laying his thin steel blade along his tongue, the tip just teasing the back of his throat. “I don’t think I asked you to beg, did I? Not yet, Ivan.”

Ivan gargled, desperate.

A thick, rattling chuckle erupted from Alastair at Deans words, visibly discomforting some of their spectators. “Give him a taste of the pain, Dean,” he persuaded softly, “just a taste now! Maybe he’ll enjoy it. I know I will.”

Dean’s eyes flicked briefly to Alastair, but his words were saved for Ivan, breathed into his ear as he sat down heavily on the demon’s lap, straddling him. “You feel this knife, Ivan? Just nod, handsome.”

Ivan did nod; accompanied by a small whine as the sharp knife scratched at the back of his throat.

“Good, good. Well, we’re going to play a game. I’m going to ask you who was behind the attack you took part in, and you are going to tell me. Every time I don’t like your answer, I’m going to take my knife…”

Dean whipped the knife out of Ivan’s mouth and pressed it to his neck terrifyingly fast.

“…and I’m going to slice a little more of this pretty neck, peeling at it piece by piece until your choices are either tell me, or beg me to let you jump from your vessel. You see my buddy Alastair here?”

Alastair winked, leaning forward slightly from where he rested back on the table with his arms crossed.

“My buddy Alastair... well, he’s  _ really _ good at this kind of thing. I have to prove I’m better than him, see?” Dean continued, “So unless you want to smoke, talk. Let’s play, Ivan.”

Teasing the demon with the chance to smoke out of his vessel was little mercy. The demon knew, as they all did, that with the gates of Hell closed to smoke out of his vessel was to jump to his death. Anti-possession tattoos had started appearing on humans within days of Lucifer rising as hunters across the world at the time tried their best to educate and save the populace.

Nowadays, demons simply had nowhere to go, to leave your vessel was to die. But, there was still a fair chance Ivan would rather do that than play with the General.

Dean’s tongue came out, curling to lick slowly up Ivan’s jaw, leaving a wet trail. His lips to the demon’s ear, Dean whispered as he began cutting.

“I hope you’re not a safe-word kind of person, Ivan.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... how was that?
> 
> Do you think Dean is going to get the information he wants? Do you think Castiel is going to get back to Camp Chitaqua? How do you think Gabriel is going to do, leading the garrison?
> 
> Let me know in a comment, because your reactions and theories are always fascinating! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading <3


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